


Roses In December

by ivorygates



Series: Roses In December [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angsty Schmoop, Bad Sex, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode AU: s07e21-22 Lost City, Explicit Language, F/M, Long, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 06:50:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 392,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1930854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year President Hayes takes office for the second time, SG-1 goes to P3X-439 and Jack takes a second download of the Ancient database. Then he saves the Earth, but there's no one to save him. He's asleep beneath the Antarctic ice, and has been for the last sixteen months.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>#</p>
</div><p>July. General Landry calls the three of them into his office. There's a man standing there—young, fresh-faced, blue-eyed, Dress Blues and full military brace. Looking nervous.</p><p>"SG-1, this is Colonel Cameron Mitchell. I believe some of you already know him," Landry adds.  "He's joining SG-1."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. March 2004-October 2005

**Author's Note:**

> Please see endnotes for detailed warnings.
> 
> I began _Roses In December_ on Wednesday, December 27, 2006, and wrote about 600 pages of it in a month and a half. Then I stopped, pretty much literally in the middle of a sentence (distracted by a New Shiny) and didn't touch it again for the next six years. I finished it on Thursday, July 3, 2014. It runs seventeen chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue) and roughly four hundred thousand words.
> 
> This is an AU that goes AU after S7e22, "Lost City". Most of it is totally PG, but there are some sections that are PG-13: there are warnings for specific content in the endnotes of each chapter.
> 
> A lot of people have helped me along the way, as shoulders to cry on, brainstormers, and betas. This is, undoubtedly, a sadly-incomplete list of them, but I would like to thank batdina, grammarwoman, greenbirds, hilarytamar, princessofgeeks, sarah, shippen_stand, synecdochic, thothmes, and wyomingnot for their patience, encouragement, and occasional grammar policing.
> 
> Since I was posting chunks of this to synecdochic while I was writing it, and swiping shamelessly from her comments, I feel it important to note that all the best lines (as well as Cam's Springsteen addiction) are hers.
> 
> If you find any missing commas, misspelled words, or characters inexplicably wandering around after I've killed them, those are all on me. Please let me know in comments and I will fix them.

Roses In December: Prologue: March 2004

_Monday's child is fair of face,_  
Tuesday's child is full of grace;  
Wednesday's child is full of woe,  
Thursday's child has far to go… 

It takes Cameron Mitchell a long time to get past the pain to the place where he knows who he is, and when he gets there, it takes him even longer to feel grateful for being alive.

Everyone keeps telling him he's lucky. Fairness forces him to admit their point, because he sees the other guys on the ward, the ones who've come home from other wars missing hands and arms and legs and faces. And sure, people can still look at him without holding their face extra still.

But the nurses are bright and brisk, and so are the orderlies, and he knows it's all game face with them; nobody's going to crack open and feel anything. Couldn't do this job if they did. Care, but not too much. And they tell him he's doing fine, getting stronger every day, and he doesn't give a good goddamn about stronger. He wants to walk again, and they won't any of them tell him he's going to do that.

The ward smells like sick-sweat -- a bleachy smell -- and the sharp ammonia scent of piss and the sweet yeasty scent of pus. They dim the lights down at night -- but it never gets really dark -- and at night everything seems to hurt worse and he hears the sounds of guys calling out for morphine and guys trying not to. There's never quite enough of anything to take away the pain, just to take the edge off it.

When visitors come, the curtains are drawn around the bed to give them the illusion of privacy. He finds it a little unsettling -- having the sight-lines blocked off that way -- though he can't say why. And the curtains don't do much to muffle the sounds of crying. He wonders, with drug-laced obsessiveness, whether it's better to be one of the guys who has people come and cry over them at the sight of them, or one of the ones that nobody visits at all.

He doesn't fall into either category. Somebody came and gave him a medal, the nurses say. He doesn't remember, but when he's a little more in the world, they show it to him. Medal of Honor. He ought to be proud, but he left all of Heliotrope down there on the ice. Twenty-three boys and girls he loved as dearly as his own kin, and not one of them is coming home.

And Momma and Daddy come as soon as they're let -- when he's enough in his own head he won't say things he shouldn't -- and to sit by his bedside. He's out on the ward by then, after he's spent a couple of hours with some man making sure he'd remember he'd been injured on a training flight in Finland. But they don't ask. He knew they wouldn't. They just hold his hands -- Momma on one side, and Daddy on the other -- and they tell him they're proud of him, and they tell him they're glad he's alive.

And he wants to be glad, too, because it seems unChristian and mean-spirited to throw a gift like his own life right back in the Almighty's face. But he can't feel one damned thing below his waist, and not one of the doctors here is giving him a straight answer about anything. And he knows that he and his boys and girls saved Earth, and that ought to be enough for one man's lifetime. But he's got a whole lot of years left in him, and he left every single plan he made for them back there on the ice. And he's not sure what he's going to do now.

#

Chapter 1: March 1996, March 2004—October 2005

_One for sorrow_  
Two for mirth  
Three for a funeral  
Four for a birth 

In March of 1996 the SGC was formed, almost by accident, and in the same briefing that they were told that POTUS had authorized the Chulak mission, they were told that if Danielle Jackson's theories panned out, he'd also ordered "the formation of nine teams, whose duties will be to perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and if possible, to make peaceful contact with the peoples of these worlds." Well, Dani's theories had (with a vengeance) and that meant General Hammond (all the senior officers, and Dani too) were scrambling to find thirty-two people for the Gate Teams, and all the support people they'd need besides.

Jonas Hanson's name went into the hat; Sam didn't find out about that until it was too late. Not that Colonel O'Neill would have taken her veto. Not back then. Maybe later. But that March they were all still strangers to each other, except the Colonel and Dani, who were just, okay, _strange._

But even though she'd still been just a lowly Captain (still prickly and combative from her tour at the Pentagon; that took more than a few months to wear off), she'd certainly have been let to suggest some names, because back then they were _desperate_. Thirty-two people? Trained experts with all the skills of international diplomats, a Ranger unit, a SEAL Team, and professional archeologists combined? In a group of six or less? Good luck. Turning a raw civilian into Special Forces took _years,_ and that was just for starters.

She thought of Cam, of course. He'd be perfect for the SGC. Bright, adaptable, friendly...

She thought of him, and then she didn't suggest him. The Pentagon analysts were predicting a loss-rate for their SG Teams of eighty percent. Colonel O'Neill had taken the hide off the courier who let that statistic slip in the Commissary—he beat General Hammond to the punch, but just barely—and then both of them did their own kind of damage control. 

General Hammond gathered everyone in the Program together and addressed the issue head-on, saying this was an endeavor different than anything Mankind had ever faced, a war on an entirely different sort of battlefield, but while the weapons and the enemies would be something different than any of them had ever seen before, their mandate was the same one it had been for as long as this country had been in existence. They were going into battle against the forces of a tyranny which had enslaved millions and now sought to destroy not only their country, but their planet. Their mission was to protect Earth, overthrow the tyrants, gain allies, and free the enslaved, and they were all going to have to figure out how to do that together. In war, General Hammond said, there were always those who died. And casualty prediction was a tool of Generals, and always had been. But he did not believe that it could be an accurate one in this particular case, because as a great man had once said, there were lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Colonel O'Neill said—in public—that the puzzle palace paper pushers always plugged their golf scores into their reports to save time, just the way he'd used to roll dice to come up with the number of "hostiles neutralized" to report to Rear Echelon, and he'd be happy to cover anybody who wanted to bet that they wouldn't be alive this time next year.

In private, he'd told her that he thought the Pentagon's guess might be a little optimistic.

And for ten years, Sam Carter disagreed.

#

The year President Hayes takes office for the second time, SG-1 goes to P3X-439 and Jack takes a second download of the Ancient database. Then he saves the Earth, but there's no one to save him. He's asleep beneath the Antarctic ice, and has been for the last sixteen months. 

And it's not as if she, any of them, her or Sammy or Teal'c, is allowed to make reviving Jack a mission priority anyway. General Hammond does what he can for an old friend, but he's in Washington, and life moves on. The SGC is shut down for four months—no missions unless you count the _Goa'uld_ coming to chat—until in July, Elizabeth goes to Antarctica once and for all and a General named Landry is appointed to run the SGC. Sammy is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. 

General Landry arrives on July 9th. On July 10th, they get the usual new Russian team, plus Colonel Alexi Vaselov (and Anubis). The SGC spends most of the month in lockdown. In August, SG-1 gets a new fourth. 

Colonel Nicholas Polanco, SG-6, is the most senior (surviving) officer in the SGC. He has the good grace to be embarrassed at being appointed to command them. SG-6 is an SAR Team, which means they're usually the second people on the spot, and never when things are going well. At least he isn't another Makepeace. They all remember Makepeace.

Polanco lasts four months. He dies in a Jaffa ambush just before Thanksgiving. Dani and Teal'c drag his body back through the Gate while Sammy gives suppressing fire, but he's already dead. They nearly all died on that one, because Colonel Polanco didn't let them run for it at the first sign of trouble. He was never a good fit; they're still in mourning for Jack, but how do you mourn someone who isn't actually dead?

Dani was back to visit him once. Elizabeth had been commuting between the SGC and what would become the expedition to Atlantis. She'd offered to pull strings to get Dani attached (it would have been fitting; two members of SG-1 staging complex suicides less than six months apart; everyone was 98% sure they'd never hear from the Atlantis Mission again, but General Hammond, now in Washington, had approved the gamble) but she'd refused. It had only been four months, then. She was still convinced they'd figure out some way to revive Jack safely.

The Asgard did it before, but they've vanished. The _Tok'ra_ could revive him, but not keep him from dying from the overload of Ancient knowledge in his brain. She hasn't really trusted the Tollen for years, and they aren't around to ask anyway. The Nox are unavailable. The Hebredeans are less advanced scientifically than the _Tok'ra_ , ditto the Kelownans and all the other societies the SGC has contacted that have made it past the Middle Ages.

And now they have two commanders to mourn, though Teal'c's just pissed and Sammy feels guilty and Dani, well, if she's being honest it's a combination of relief and dread. Dealing with Polanco was a strain, but now there will be someone new.

When Polanco dies, Jack's been gone eight months. 

After the funeral, after the visit (can't really call it a party) at his wife's house, Dani goes home. Alone. Home is Jack's house. It has been for a while. Since they realized he wouldn't be coming back any time soon, and, well, life has to go on. About the time Sammy made Light Colonel she sat Dani down with a bottle of Scotch for a serious talk, and she'd cried and Dani hadn't and they went to Jack's house that weekend and packed up all his clothes and some of his personal things and took them to storage, and Dani packed up all her clothes and her personal things (that took longer) and moved them into Jack's house. She sent her furniture to storage and cancelled the lease on her apartment. The two storage cubicles are side-by-side, and she has keys to both, and every once in a while she takes a few more things out and puts a few more things in. Despite her wishes and intentions, the house is slowly becoming hers.

#

They're on a week's stand-down after Colonel Polanco's death. Cassie goes to a friend's for Thanksgiving and Dani has Sammy and Teal'c over to clear out the junk room over the garage and eat Chinese food. She puts down her carpets and moves all her bookshelves in, collecting her books from all over the house and moving them there, opening the boxes of books stacked in the spare room.

#

In December, General Landry attaches Jennifer Haley to SG-1, leaving Sammy (he says temporarily) in command. Captain Jennifer Hailey is (still) bouncy, determined, and scientific. She's been on one of the Science Teams, but wanted First Contact. Hailey'd been in one of the first groups taken directly from there for Gate Team Finishing School. Jack ran that module. (Three years ago.) Dani played a _Goa'uld_. Probably a good choice, since Sammy's got command now.

But Hailey isn't a good fit either. She's out to prove herself, and she doesn't care who's in her way. Kind of like Merry McKay without social skills, if that's possible. Hailey's supposed to be military and believe in the chain of command, but she thinks being right is more important. And being right is only more important sometimes. Dani tries to referee the fights, wondering if this is what Sammy had to put up with all those years.

It can't be, though, because three months in they all come down the ramp yelling at each other at the top of their lungs (except Teal'c), and General Landry calls Sammy into his office and a week later Hailey's reassigned.

On the anniversary of the day Jack was frozen Dani's TDY with SG-16, Sammy's with SG-11, and Teal'c's with SG-19. General Landry has split them up for a while—it's happened before, under General Hammond—but Dani knows this time it's only partly because their skills are needed elsewhere. Landry wants to break the jinx. Two months later they're needed back in the field in a hurry. They go as a threesome, and it works. Better than anything has so far. So for the next two months, that's the way it is. SG-1 is a three-man team (well, two women, one Jaffa).

July. General Landry calls the three of them into his office. There's a man standing there—young, fresh-faced, blue-eyed, Dress Blues and full military brace. Looking nervous.

"SG-1, this is Colonel Cameron Mitchell. I believe some of you already know him."

"Yes, sir," Sammy says. "Colonel Mitchell and I go back quite a few years."

Mitchell. The name is vaguely familiar, but Dani can't place it.

"Then I'm sure you'll be able to make him feel right at home."

They all look at each other in puzzlement.

"He's joining SG-1," Landry adds.

Dani's been around the military long enough to figure out their heraldic systems. "Um, General? He isn't really a Colonel."

Mitchell smiles. "Lieutenant Colonel, actually," he says.

"So, then, um, you and Sammy—"

General Landry looks disgruntled, but then, he usually does. "Dr. Jackson, due to the high mortality among Gate Teams, and the fact our work here at the SGC covers such a broad spectrum of operational parameters, the Pentagon is instituting a pilot program of assigning joint command. Field command will depend on mission parameters: on scientific missions, Colonel Carter will make the decisions. On purely military missions, Colonel Mitchell will call the shots."

Now Sammy looks a little bit stunned.

"I promise I'll try not to step on your toes, Sam," Mitchell says.

"Try not to get him killed," Landry says. "He's expensive."

Now that was uncalled-for.

"Yes, sir," Sammy says.

#

The four of them walk out of Landry's office.

"Well," Mitchell says, "that was..."

"A little awkward?" Sammy says. "Don't worry, Cam. We'll work things out."

"I mean, you know, Sam, I would never think of, well, you know. I mean, when I finally found out what it was that— I mean, _shoot._ "

Sammy laughs.

Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell... "Oh my god," Dani says, stopping dead. "You're _Cameron Mitchell._ "

When they'd been trying to get at the Ancient Outpost in Antarctica, they'd been under attack by Anubis's advance guard. Earth's one-and-only squadron of F-302s had defended them. A battle unequal in every way. Only the lead 302 pilot had survived. Barely. (Anubis had fared better, returning for a memorable month of lockdown three days after Landry took over. At least he's dead now.)

"Uh, yeah," Mitchell says, looking absolutely mortified.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Dani—" Sammy says.

"Well, they kinda told me I could choose my next posting, Dr. Jackson—"

"And you came _here?_ "

He grins at her. "General Hammond used to come and see me while I was in the hospital. I was pretty down there for a while. So he told me he guessed I'd earned the right to know what I'd done it all for. He let me see some of your mission reports, and I guessed if you could do the things you did, well, I could learn to walk again. And I figured, when I got out, there was no place I'd rather be."

"You're crazy."

The grin hasn't faded. "Yeah."

"I have been told many times that insanity is not a prerequisite to service at this facility, but it is an advantage," Teal'c says. Mitchell blinks. It always takes the new guys a little while to get used to Teal'c.

"C'mon," Sammy says. "Want the tour?"

"Oh, yeah."

#

"So okay, you knew him from where?"

She's down in Sammy's lab. They've showed Mitchell over the whole place and then handed him over to Walter. All the important things still to do. Paperwork, uniforms, office assignment.

"Iraq. We were in the same squadron. We kept in touch. I recommended him for the 302 program."

"Not half a story, Sammy."

Sammy smiles. "He's a nice guy. I'm kind of glad he's here."

"So. You two gonna hook up again?"

"Dani! We were never _hooked up!_ Well, okay, we slept together for about eight months back in 1995, and it was really good, and he was really sweet, and then we both realized we were looking for other things entirely."

"So, you, um ... _slept_ with him?"

"Don't look so surprised."

"I'm not. I guess. I mean ... okay. That's different."

"Oh, it won't be a problem. You'll see."

"Yeah. We've got one in forty-eight." And maybe a new fourth at the end of it. 

God, she hopes not.

#

"So what's the thing with Dr. J?"

Cam, released by Walter, has wandered back down to her lab. Wander, amble, lope ... that's Cameron Mitchell. It's deceptive. You'd think he couldn't move fast. Until you saw him on the basketball court. Or running across the tarmac toward his plane. Even in the sky—she's flown second seat—his motions are deliberate, as if all the gravity the machine defies is concentrated in his hands.

"What thing?" Sam asks. _Which_ thing, to be more precise. She loves Dani utterly, but … Dani is Dani.

"Well..." He grabs a stool, sits down, makes himself at home. Looks at her workbench with wide-eyed curiosity, and she realizes she's expecting him to grab the nearest object. And he doesn't. _(Miss you, Colonel. Jack.)_ "Pretty girl. _Smart_ girl. I was hoping, you know, you'd kind of give me a heads-up there. She seeing anyone?"

It's such a bizarre question that Sam just stares at him for several seconds _"Dani?"_ she finally asks in disbelief.

Cam's easy grin fades. "Did I say something wrong?" he asks.

"Well, um, no. But, well, Dani doesn't see people. I mean, she doesn't date." Although she's seen Dani's security review now—it felt so wrong to read it, but it was her job to read it when she got command—and she knows Dani "sees people." Cam will too, as soon as he looks at it. She supposes they'll be going over each others' security reviews, too. Joint command is going to be a real goatfuck in some ways. (As her father would say when he thought she was out of earshot.) "But I guess you're looking for care and feeding instructions. That's a little tough. She's my best friend."

"Gotta be a little rough ordering her around, then," Cam says after a moment.

Sam laughs. "Dani doesn't take orders. Dani takes suggestions under advisement. Colonel Polanco—" she stops.

"Yeah," Cam says quietly. "I heard about that. I'm sorry."

"So were we," Sam says tightly. "If he'd just—" She takes a deep breath. _Over and done._ (She hears Colonel O'Neill's voice in her mind.) "Anyway. It wasn't as bad as it could have been—"

"Not like Colonel Makepeace?" Cam asks. Sam stares at him in surprise. "Hey, I got a _lot_ of the old campfire tales," he says. 

Sam grins. "No, nothing like that. If she ever calls _you_ 'Colonel, sir,' you're in deep kimchee, though. It was still the honeymoon period; she was deciding who he was going to be, and he was still thinking she was going to become, well, more military."

Which is probably the most tactful way of addressing white mutiny and an escalating series of lectures on why Chain of Command is a _good_ thing.

"And that'd be a "no?'"

"Pretty much. It's been nine years, Cam. What you see is what you get. Give her coffee in the morning, don't talk to her before noon, don't check her pack when we're going offworld, assume she's going to go wandering off in the direction of anything that looks interesting, and, oh yeah: she's flypaper for freaks."

"Come again?"

"When we go through the Gate. If there's a mentally-unbalanced local within fifty miles, he'll show up looking for her. Shy'lac. Nem. Aris Boch. Klorel and Osiris aren't a problem any more, thank God. But the list goes on."

The grin is back. "Well, she _is_ awfully cute."

"For the love of God, Cam, don't ever tell her that."

He looks puzzled. "Why not?"

Sam throws up her hands. "She doesn't want to hear it." She sighs. "When you see her in civvies, I think you'll figure it out. And I'm warning you right now: she holds an Intermediate in Unarmed Combat, and she works out with Teal'c."

Cam's smile broadens. "Now that's just cool. Do you think they'd let me watch?"

Sam smiles back. "If you ask nicely, they'll even teach you."

#

Sammy calls him "Cam," so she does too. "Cameron" when he can't keep his hands off the artifacts in her office (half the SGC treats her office like a museum full of "Please Touch" signs). He can't tell the difference between the alien artifacts and the ancient (not _Ancient_ ) Earth ones. On Tuesday he's back in her office again (she's developing a theory he pissed off Walter and doesn't actually have his own office), and she starts in on a lecture—the fine points of the differences between that looks-like-Minoan dagger he's holding (it's from the Land of Light) and something that's actually from Ancient Crete. About ten minutes in—six minutes after most non-specialists' eyes glaze over—she realizes _he's still listening._

She stops. "You haven't understood a word I've said, have you?"

He grins. "About one in three. The part about how this one has stone inlay, and the real, ah, the _Minoan_ thing would probably have glass."

"Yes. Enamel. Because the Mykene haven't developed glasswork or enamel technology, due to their isolation from the Egyptian culture. So their motifs have fossilized at a level circa 1500 BCE—which we see a lot in cultures planted by the _Goa'uld_ ; cultural fossilization at the point of transplantation—but their production methods and materials are different, and... you _were_ listening."

"Well, yeah."

"Why?"

"I guess I kinda think knowing this stuff might come in handy some time."

"I doubt it," she says dismissively.

The smile fades, but only slightly. He cocks his head. "How you figure?"

"I figure you're here to yell and shoot."

"Well, okay, you got me. I like to shoot. Me and my brother and some of the cousins out in the woods ... that's great. Not so much on the yellin', though." He smiles again, and sets the dagger back on the shelf. He's a little in love, she thinks, with all of them, and the whole idea of SG-1. 

She's not sure how she feels about that.

#

Wednesday morning the four of them go through the Gate as SG-1 for the first time.

It's Cam's first time through the Gate, and it's supposed to be a routine survey of a (probably) uninhabited world, so Sammy's in charge. They won't be staying overnight: it's a six-hour walkover, check-back at three.

"Oh, man, now that is a _rush!_ " Cam says, stepping out through the Gate.

"Hey, you should have tried it before I fixed the interface," Sammy says, grinning at him. "You couldn't eat for four hours before a mission, and you showed up on the other side covered in frost—not to mention the fact that the lack of inertial compensators meant half the time you didn't _step_ through, you got _thrown_ through."

Oh, god, Dani remembers those days. When Sammy finally tweaked their Dialing Computer and they could all stop wearing those crash helmets or combat helmets or whatever they were? She was so happy. She'd _hated_ those.

"Sounds like fun." He looks up. "Hey, the sky's purple."

"Different refractory index than on Earth," Sammy says.

"The trees look the same."

"Well, I'll have a better idea once I analyze the samples, but it's probably a _Goa'uld_ -seeded ecosystem. The _Goa'uld_ don't usually go in for large-scale terraforming, but they almost always seed Stargate worlds with at least some Earth flora, and we've found those types tend to take over from the local forms. Come on. Let's do a perimeter sweep and then start looking around."

They start to fan out. Dani realizes Cam is still standing there. "Come on," she says.

She walks off. He follows.

"Why do you carry that thing?" he asks, nodding at her quarterstaff.

He might have been a pilot before he came to the SGC, but he's got good instincts. He's got both hands on his P90, and he's watching all around them. He's probably looking for different things than she is. She hopes so. She's looking for traces of civilization—ancient, recent. No sign so far.

"Balance. Defense. It's a useful tool for poking things."

"Poking things. Like what?"

"Well, when you see a nice dark hole, you don't necessarily want to stick your hand down it first."

"Snakes?"

"Oh, god, I wish. I did once, and this centipede-thing—it must have been four feet long and bright yellow—came swarming out and right up my leg. I yelled my head off, and Jack—" She stops.

_Jack._

"I'm sorry," Cam says, and she knows he's not talking about the centipede.

"We're all sorry," she says. "It's the breaks of the game. Come on. Almost done here."

#

"So Dani was telling me about this giant centipede," Cam says.

"She told you about that?" Sam says. It's just after first check-in. Break-time. They haven't seen anything interesting—meaning signs of civilization—yet.

"Started to. We kinda got interrupted. I was wondering if you might want to tell me how it came out. I mean, you're all still here. Uh, if you'd rather not talk about it, Sam—"

They're not talking about centipedes, and they both know it. Cam's new to SG-1, but he's not new to command.

"No. It's okay. Just kind of, well, the elephant in the room, you know? She wanted to take the download, and he wouldn't let her."

"I didn't know that."

"It didn't make it into the mission report. A lot of things don't. You'll learn what to leave out."

"She think it's her fault, Sam?"

"That we couldn't save him this time? Of course she does. But she's doing okay."

"Is she?"

Sam takes a deep breath. "You deal with it. You learn to deal with it. When Janet died—our, she was CMO, my—her—our friend—God, she died right in Dani's _arms_ —you suck it up. You get through it. You grieve, you move on. You have to."

It comes out harsher than she means it to. But they're _all_ still dealing with it. This isn't like the time Dani was sort-of dead for two months. This is almost a year and a half. And the prognosis is grim.

"Well, okay. Maybe. If someone's dead. But Colonel O'Neill isn't really dead, is he?"

Sam glances around, but Dani's definitely out of earshot. "About as good as, Cam. They took the ZPM from the Atlantis Outpost to power the Gate to send the Atlantis Mission through. The stasis chamber Colonel O'Neill's in seemed to have a kind of independent power source, so we thought it'd be okay. But apparently it was only supposed to be a kind of back-up battery. And it's failing."

Cam blinks. "You aren't going to tell her."

"Dr. Lee is at the Antarctic site are trying to interface the stasis chamber with a _naquaadah_ generator. If he can get it to work, there won't be anything to tell. If he can't get it to work, there's nothing she could do anyway."

"She could say 'goodbye.'"

"She's already said that, Cam. We all have." Sam takes a deep breath. "But you wanted to hear the rest of the centipede story. Okay." _For God's sake, let's change the subject before I have to tell my team why I'm crying._ "It was in our first year of missions; we were writing the rulebook on the fly. She stuck her hand down a hole. By the time I got there, this God-awful _thing_ had climbed halfway up her, and she's dancing around, and Colonel O'Neill is there trying to get her to hold still long enough to get it off her—and trying to do it without actually _touching_ it—and she's swearing at him at the top of her lungs—mostly not in English—and he finally pulls out his knife and gets it under the top half of the thing and _heaves,_ and it rears back with all those little legs flailing, and _both_ of them look like they're going to throw up, and then Teal'c shows up—out of nowhere, I swear, the man can move like a _cat_ —and rips it the rest of the way loose and flings it away and blasts it with his staff-weapon, and then the two of them—the Colonel and Dani—start yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. And then, of course, she wants to go poking back down in the same hole again."

Cam chuckles, because, oh God, it really _is_ a funny story. "And did she?" he asks.

"Eventually. The Colonel made Teal'c go first—his symbiote would protect him—and we dug it out a little bit. Nothing much there. Just some old pottery and coins."

"Sounds like fun."

"I guess a lot of it was."

#

On their first mission nobody dies, and there isn't much yelling. Well, if you don't count the part where Cam falls into the stream.

The whole day's been pretty much a wash from Dani's point of view. There's some indication of roads, but not enough time to follow them in the mission schedule. And they're only faint tracings, indicating either that the natives are very primitive, or the civilization is long gone—probably the latter, as the road-indications are fairly wide. Nothing anywhere near the Stargate, though. And nothing showed up on the UAV. If there's enough _naquaadah_ to come back for—based on the soil and environmental samples—maybe the mining team can do wider sweeps. She'll mention it in her report. 

On the way back to the Gate, they detour to the river so they can pick up the water samples. Water is heavy, so they always do those last.

"Okay," Sammy says. "I've got the shallow water samples and the sediment samples. I'm just going to go out and get one from the middle."

There's a series of boulders running across the middle of the stream here; that's why they picked this spot. The stream is fast; the water's hitting the boulders and spraying up. It's probably not too deep, though. 

Probably.

"No, no, I'll do it. Happy to be of help," Cam says, grabbing the sampling container. It looks pretty much like a gallon milk jug, but it probably cost somewhere about a hundred bucks. That's the military for you.

Cam steps out carefully onto the rocks—they're round and moss-covered and they look slippery—and leans over to dip the container into the water.

"Careful!" Sammy calls.

"I've got it! I've got it!"

He overbalances, pinwheeling frantically and fruitlessly, still clutching the container. And ... splash.

He goes completely under. There's an ear-splitting howl as he surfaces. "Cold! _Cold!_ "

"Colonel Mitchell!" Teal'c calls. "Did you obtain Colonel Carter's sample?"

"Oh yeah." Cam sounds completely disgusted. "I got your sample right here." He brandishes the jug. It's full.

"Very inventive, Cam," Sam says. "I never would have thought of doing it that way. Now come on. Stop playing around."

He staggers to his feet—the current makes it hard, and look, the water's only waist-deep—and caps the jug carefully before wading back to shore.

"I am _wet,_ " he announces.

"So I perceive," Teal'c says blandly.

"Um, anybody got a towel?"

She pulls off her pack and digs through it. Yes. She offers him a hand towel. He rubs his face and hair, then looks down mournfully at his gear. He went out onto the rocks fully-loaded.

"You," Sammy says, "are going to be spending a lot of time explaining to Sergeant Harrison why you decided to give your P90 a bath when we get back to the Armory."

"I'm doomed, aren't I?"

"Pretty much," she says cheerfully.

"C'mere and let me give you a great big hug," Cam says to Sammy.

"Nuh-uh," Sammy says, stepping back. "Team Leader. Get your ass back to the Gate before you catch pneumonia."

"Yes, _sir,_ ma'am. Oh, and, um, thanks for the towel, Dr. J."

"For the last time—"

"—Dani. Okay. I get it. I guess if we've shared a towel, we gotta be on a first-name basis, right?" He drapes the towel around his neck.

"Um. Right."

She supposes it's better than "Dr. J."

#

Friday is her birthday.

Second one ... without.

Life goes on.

It was going to be dinner at O'Malley's for just them and Cassie and one or two close friends, but at the last minute (Tuesday) Sammy asked if Dani would mind expanding the guest list a little and moving it to her (Sammy's) house. Because they really ought to welcome Cam to the team. It's the polite thing to do. And she says "yes" and "tell them no presents," because it's not like Sammy asks her for a lot of things, and she's been scared (down deep where she doesn't think about it) since 439 that Sammy's going to leave the Team too. Since, well, _Cassie._ Cassie's seventeen this year, and five years ago, when she came to Earth, Janet adopted her and Sammy and Janet raised her and Dani helped. (Jack helped, and Teal'c.) And then Cassie lost her second mother and her Uncle Jack and now she lives with her Aunt Sam and god help her if she's ever stuck with her Aunt Dani and wouldn't it just be better if Sammy had a more settled home life?

But Sammy stayed. So the least Dani owes her is to let Sammy turn her birthday into whatever she wants to.

#

She's been told when to show up, and it's not that late—7:30—so she just stays on-Base so she can give Teal'c a ride over. They've been trying for years to get him permission to live off-Base. It should be possible now that he's on tretonin. No go.

She heads by Teal'c's quarters around six-thirty. Teal'c bows as he opens the door.

"Felicitations of your natal day, Danielle Jackson."

"Um, thanks. You look..." _Like disco hasn't died._

The shirt has an eye-popping pattern in a number of shades of fuchsia. The pants are crushed velvet bell-bottoms that actually match the shirt. So do his shoes, and they're patent leather. Sometimes—a lot of times, over the years—she's wondered where he _finds_ these clothes.

"Colonel Carter specified festal dress for the occasion. Do you not wish to comply?"

She looks down at her t-shirt and khakis. "I guess I could go change."

Teal'c gets his hat—matches the pants and makes him look like a gangster—and the velvet jacket that matches the pants. The buttons are gold. He also picks up a large, brightly-wrapped box.

"Is that for me? Can I open it now?"

"It is indeed. And no, you may not."

That much hasn't changed.

#

They drive back to the house—it's pretty much on the way—and go inside. "Make yourself at home," she calls, heading off to the bedroom. Festal dress. She knew that. It's just easier to ignore Sammy than it is to ignore Teal'c.

She rummages through her closet. Suits. No. Funeral clothes. No. Bar-hopping dresses. God, no.

Wait.

In the back, stuffed onto a hangar and forgotten, is last year's birthday present from Cassie, a broomstick skirt in shades of blue and brown and gold. Fine. She has a skirt. She tears through her dresser drawers until she finds one of her Desert Tan uniform t-shirts (most of her wardrobe is courtesy of the US Military). She strips, tosses on the shirt and the skirt, slips on the Eye of Ra (Catherine's pendant; it's the only jewelry she owns), hesitates, and slips her feet into her strappy gold sandals. Nobody needs to know what she usually wears them with.

"Okay," she says, coming back out into the living room again. "Good?"

Teal'c inclines his head. "It is indeed most suitable, Danielle Jackson."

"Can I—"

"No."

#

They get to Sammy's—only a couple of minutes late—and Cassie opens the door. Her eyes grow wide. "You _wore_ it!" she squeaks, enveloping Dani in a fierce hug. "Aunt Sam! Aunt Sam! Aunt Dani wore the skirt!" She turns and runs off. Quicksilver.

Dani walks in, down the long hallway, careful because she's in heels. Low heels, but still.

The living room is already full of people. All SGC, all people she knows. Sammy comes out of the kitchen. "You _are_ wearing it!"

She accepts a hug. "Did he put a gun to your head?" Sammy whispers in her ear. "Festal dress," Dani whispers back.

"Come on," Sammy says, leading her into the middle of the room. "Okay!" she calls, "She's here!"

"Sammy, _no!_ "

"Oh, yes," Sammy says ruthlessly. "This is your birthday. First we display you and sing "Happy Birthday,' then we eat, then there's presents and cake."

"I want a drink."

"Soon."

It's only, thank god, about thirty people. But _General Landry_ is here. He shakes her hand after the singing.

"Many happy returns of the day, Dr. Jackson. Here's hoping there will be many more."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"I know the invitation said "no presents," but I took the liberty of bringing one. I'm sure you'll be able to guess which one it is."

She needs to find a way to kill Sammy slowly and painfully. "Thank you, sir. I'm sure that won't be difficult." Alcohol. Now.

People are sort of swirling around, in typical party fashion, most of them coming up to her to say something like "Happy Birthday" (the groundside personnel) and "lived through another one" (the members of the Gate Teams). Cam shows up with a beer, takes her hand, wraps her fingers around it, and drapes his arm around her shoulders.

"You clean up real nice," he says.

"Festal occasion," she mutters. She downs half the beer in one long swallow. "This is all... I mean, you needed a party. Sammy just kind of combined them."

"Well, that isn't really fair to you, is it? You should have your own party."

"Oh, I don't think so. I don't like parties."

"Well, what do you like?"

"Intimate candlelight dinners, long walks on the beach, running barefoot through the rain..."

He regards her assessingly—as if he's actually thinking it over—then smiles. "Oh, now you're just funnin' with me."

She moves out from under his arm. "My idea of fun bores normal people to death. I'm going to go see what's in the kitchen."

What's in the kitchen is enough food to feed everyone here twice over. There are huge foil-wrapped serving containers everywhere. It's all takeout, but it's _good_ takeout.

"I see Cam found you," Sam says, nodding at the beer in her hand.

"Yeah."

Sammy fixes her a plate. "Sorry I didn't have time to cook. I called up Luigi's and had them send in everything. Cam was fit to be tied. He says he has to have us all over for dinner as soon as he finds a place and unpacks." Sammy hands her a fork. 

Dani contemplates the logistics of beer—fork—plate and needing to move out of the kitchen, because it's the main serving area. "He cooks?" she says, settling for stuffing an entire stuffed shell into her mouth. She'll collect her beer and find some place to sit in a minute.

"Like an angel. Wait till you have one of his breakfasts." Sammy rolls her eyes.

" _Not_ something I'm going to be doing any time soon," Dani points out. And neither, she imagines, will Sammy. Same Gate Team. Forbidden fruit.

She picks up her plate and heads back out into the living room. All the chairs and the couch are taken. She contemplates the floor, and prepares to slide into a sitting position—easy enough, she's done it a million times—but she's managed to forget what shoes she's wearing. Slippy little sandals. Her ankle twists and she starts to fall.

"Easy there." Cam's hand is under her elbow, steadying her. She struggles upright again. "Don't need the birthday girl falling on her face."

"Stupid shoes." She kicks them off, and completes the originally-intended maneuver. Didn't even spill her beer. Well, it was half-empty to begin with.

He bends over and picks one up. "Kinda pretty."

"You wear them, then."

"Nah. I'm just not the gold lamé and heels type."

"Oh, neither am I. But—"

"Festal dress. I gotcha. Want another beer?"

She drains the rest of the bottle quickly. "Yeah."

By the time he manages to get back with another one—two more—and his own plate of food, she's finished a good half of what's on her plate. He gets down to the floor a good deal less gracefully than she did, and has to hand her both bottles and the plate to manage.

"Oh, man," he groans. "I don't bend that way."

It only occurs to her after he's gotten there that he's sitting with her and she really can't just get up and leave. And, well, why should she? New team member. She supposes she ought to get to know him. At least he isn't going to get into screaming fights with Sammy, it looks like. And—so far—he hasn't tried to order her around.

Of course, they've only been on one mission.

"I've spent most of my life sitting on the ground," she says. "One way or another. It keeps you flexible."

"Didn't they have _chairs_ in Ancient Egypt?" Cam demands, sounding outraged. (Sounding as if he thinks she lives in Ancient Egypt, too. Well, close enough.)

"Only for the upper classes, actually. For most people, most places—you sit on the ground. And the chairs were—probably, actually—not really that comfortable."

"But I mean ... don't you _know?_ "

She thinks about it for a second before understanding dawns. "You mean Abydos. You can't tell from Abydos. Not only had it been separated from Egypt for approximately five thousand years—so there was actually a small amount of cultural evolution—but Ra only transplanted the worker caste."

"So... no chairs?"

"Nothing representative of Egyptian chairs, no. And I can't believe you're actually interested."

"Dani, I'm tellin' you. I'm fascinated."

"I hope you're just as fascinated the first time you wind up in a _Goa'uld_ dungeon."

"Oh, lookin" forward to that."

"You're insane."

"You know, people been telling me that for years."

#

They arrive, pretty quickly, at cake-and-presents, and by then Dani's decided the presents may just fall into the category of "mandated public humiliation," because she's going to have to open them in front of everybody.

And there are, actually, an embarrassingly-large number. Can't anybody _read_ these days? She knows Sammy sent around an email.

Sammy's gotten her Scotch, thank god. Nyan gives her a fountain pen for her collection. Cassie gives her a gift certificate to the rare bookstore downtown. "I thought, because you didn't like the skirt..." she says.

"I was just waiting for the right time to wear it," she says, hugging Cassie. "But I love this, too."

Amelia's knitted her a sweater. She actually wears Amelia's sweaters, as they're incredibly warm. Most of the rest of the gifts are either coffee or chocolate (you can never have too much of either); a few coffee mugs (ditto); and a couple that are both odd and useful, like a hard-sided glasses case that goes on a lanyard. Not that she usually takes her glasses off, offworld, but still.

But Teal'c has gotten her a plushy stuffed Sphinx. "Traditions should not be allowed to fall into abeyance, Danielle Jackson," he says.

It was Jack's running joke for years. (Obscure and complicated, like their lives.) The Egyptians had hundreds of gods, and all of them had animal aspects. Her office is filled with stuffed animals, and only the two of them knew the selection wasn't random. Dog, cat, crocodile, jackass … if the Egyptians worshipped it, Jack considered it a suitable present (birthday or Christmas, some years birthday _and_ Christmas.) Because she never had a proper childhood. Because she was incredibly childish. Because the _Goa'uld_ ought to be a joke. Pick one.

"No, Teal'c," she says, taking a deep breath. "I guess they shouldn't."

General Landry (on the other hand) has gotten her a clock. It automatically adjusts itself for time-zone and for Daylight Savings time by pinging the Atomic Clock located at Fort Collins (right nearby, actually). "It works down on Level 19, too," he says meaningfully. "I've tested it."

"Yes, sir," she says. "Thank you sir." Possibly the most expensive gag gift she's ever gotten, although she suspects he doesn't mean it to be funny. But then, she's never quite managed to figure General Landry out.

"So aren't you going to open Cam's present?" Sammy says.

There's one box left. It's enormous. She'd actually vaguely thought it was a decoration.

"Um..."

"I hope you like it." He sounds worried, and she can't really say (out loud) that after the clock anything will be an improvement. She settles for tearing off the paper.

"You got me an espresso maker?" she says blankly.

"Well, Sam said you didn't have one—"

"I also told you it was the last thing on earth she needed," Sammy mutters.

"Oh, _cool,_ " Dani says, digging for the manual. 

Okay, the opening of the presents doesn't quite suck after all.

#

General Landry leaves before the cake—saying cake is bad for his doctor's blood pressure—and everybody relaxes a bit. Dani thinks the cake is great (chocolate cake, fudge icing, and no damned candles); Cam says it's not a patch on his, and once they've tasted his red velvet cake, they'll be spoiled for all other cakes. Sergeant Merriman is from the South, too, and first the two of them play "do you know" for about twenty minutes—establishing, apparently, that they're very distantly related—and then discussing the finer points of cake recipes. Dani makes notes on the possibility this form of insanity is geographically-linked, and wonders if she can find out how many members of the Gate Teams are from the Southern US.

After the cake, people begin to leave, peeling away in layers of affect, until first, only Dani's friends linger for a last drink and farewell, and then it's just them. SG-1 and Cassie.

Cam is part of "them" now. SG-1.

Dani goes into the kitchen for another beer.

"You might as well break out the hard stuff," Sammy calls after her, "because you aren't going anywhere tonight."

"Sammy!" she says, coming back. "I've only had four!"

"And that will make five," Sammy says, nodding to the unopened beer in her hand. "All the way to the Mountain and then back to the house? I don't think so."

"Teal'c can drive to the Mountain."

"It's a half hour from there to the house."

"There won't be anybody on the road. I'll have coffee instead."

"Why don't we make this easy?" Cam says. He's sprawled on the couch with Sammy tucked up under his arm. "We'll _all_ have another beer, and Teal'c can drive _me_ back to the Mountain. I'm still bunking there anyway. I kinda figured he was the designated driver."

"He should be," Sammy says darkly.

"Sammy! I have _never_ had an accident!" She crosses the room to hand the beer to Cam.

"Pure luck."

"It isn't. I would _never_ drive when I was actually drunk."

"Oh, _actually,_ " she hears Sammy mutter, as she goes off to the kitchen to get the Scotch.

"I want some," Cassie says, when she comes back.

"Over my dead body," Sammy says lazily.

Dani hands Cassie the glass. Cassie sips it and wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Euw."

"It's an acquired taste," Dani says loftily. And she intends to acquire a sufficiency of it tonight, if she's sleeping here.

"Jaffa do not acquire such tastes," Teal'c says smugly.

"It's poison," Cam says happily, taking a swig from his bottle. "But I thought you guys—I mean, with the—you know, the _thing_ —"

"It is true that the _Goa'uld_ symbiote, did I still carry one, could metabolize the harmful effects of the poison which you take such delight in imbibing. But to voluntarily choose to consume poison has always seemed to me to be a bizarre custom."

"Oh, we've got a lot of 'em," Dani mutters. She sits down on the couch at the far end from Cam and Sammy. She can't believe she's watching them ... canoodle.

If that's what they're doing.

"So, which one did you like best, Aunt Dani?" Cassie asks. "Of your presents?"

"Yours, of course," Dani says promptly.

"Oh, don't be polite!" Cassie says huffily. "I want to know!"

"And I can't tell you," Dani says reasonably. "Because three of the other people who gave me presents are sitting right here. If I pick one of them—instead of you—I offend the other two. If I pick none of them, I offend all three of them. What would you do?"

"I'd tell the truth," Cassie says stubbornly.

"And sometimes that's not the best thing to do," Dani says patiently.

" _You_ always tell the truth."

"I lie like a rug."

Cam barks with laughter, rearing forward on the couch. Sammy huffs with annoyance at being disturbed, and slaps his knee.

"Aunt Dani!" Cassie says. Heading into storm country. She's been that way for the last couple of years. Volatile.

"Okay. Tell you what. I'll go home tomorrow and make a list of everything I got tonight. And next year, on my birthday, I'll tell you which of them I liked best." By which time Cassie will probably have forgotten, and even if she hasn't, nobody else will care. And at which time she can afford to tell Cassie the absolute truth. And maybe even figure it out, too.

"You might not be alive next year," Cassie says without thinking. A moment later she realizes what she's said, eyes going wide with horror, and bounds to her feet, running from the room.

"Well, fuck," Dani says. "And the evening was going so well, too."

Sammy drops her head back on Cam's arm. Anger, weariness, resignation. "I'll go."

"No," Dani says with a sigh, "I will. It's not like she's saying anything that isn't true. And she doesn't know Josie Hammond all that well." 

Josie Hammond—General Hammond's daughter-in-law—is their last-resort backup for Cassie, if all of them are dead. They always hoped—still hope—she won't be needed. If Cassie reaches eighteen with even one of them alive, she won't be, and whether they are or not, Cassie will never have to scramble or scrape; all of Janet's money went into a trust for Cassie, and all four of them have _(had)_ been paying into that same fund since the day Cassie arrived on Earth. Cassie doesn't actually gain full control of the money until she's thirty. Dani's will is set up to roll all her liquid assets into the trust immediately upon her death. Sammy is her primary executor (now); Nyan is her backup, as he's really more likely to survive. Everyone (even Sammy) thinks of Dani as unworldly and scatterbrained, but she keeps a ferociously up-to-date catalog of her library and collections, including what she paid for each item, and when, and its approximate current value. Some she has earmarked as donations, some will go as gifts to her unlikely survivors, some of her books will enrich the SGC Library, but upon her death the rest of all she owns will be liquidated at auction to enrich Cassie's trust.

"You might want to give the kid a minute," Cam says.

"Yeah," Dani says. "I'll go make coffee."

#

When the coffee's made, she goes back to Cassie's room, carrying her cup. Formerly Sammy's spare bedroom, until a year and a half ago when it became Cassie's room, permanently and forever, and they barely buried Janet and then Jack was gone too. The door is closed. She goes in anyway. Cassie's lying on her bed, listening to the iPod Dani bought her for Christmas. She's staring at the ceiling, face determinedly blank.

 _"I don't like crying girls. If you cry, I won't take you, Danielle."_ Nick said that to her on the day of her parents' funeral, as if he were offering her a contract. Cassie hadn't cried for Janet, either. Dani wonders if she cried for her biological mother. By the time they found her on Hanka it was days later and she was deep in shock. She never even told them her mother's name, though at twelve, she certainly knew it. SG-12 had been on the planet for three months, documenting the culture as they set up the astronomical observatory, but there's no surviving footage of Cassie or her family. 

Dani sits down on the bed. "I don't care if you tell the truth," she says, even though Cassie probably can't hear her. 

She sits and drinks her coffee, and eventually Cassie pulls the earbuds out of her ears. "Aunt Sam sent you in here to make me tell you I'm sorry," she says crossly.

"No," Dani answers. "I came to say you don't have to be."

"I ruined your birthday," Cassie says, only sounding sulky now.

"Pretty much over. Cake, presents. Anyway, it's true."

Cassie considers that in silence, still staring at the ceiling. In Cassie's world, people die. She and Dani have that in common. "You gonna tell me now? Cause, you know, nobody's here to hear. And, because, you know, you might not be here later." Truth is a peace offering.

"If I do, you won't tell?"

"Not even Aunt Sam?"

"Especially Aunt Sam."

Cassie moves over, and Dani lies down beside her, setting down her cup on the nightstand. The original guest-room furniture is gone, replaced with Cassie's; they all seem to measure their losses now in rows of anonymous storage cubicles filled with superseded furniture. "Okay. A lot of them were nice. A camo-pattern sweater? Pretty cool. And you know, the enamel on Nyan's pen was just about the color of the Event Horizon, so ... sweet."

Cassie pokes her.

"I'm getting there," Dani protests amiably. "General Landry's clock? He can bite me. So that isn't even in the running. Your present? I liked that, but I don't know what it is yet, because I haven't used it, so we can't rank it."

"Okay," Cassie says, agreeing with her logic. "That leaves the team, because really, everything else was just ... stuff."

"Yeah, pretty much," Dani agrees. "Scotch is good. Can't go wrong there."

"Aunt Sam buys you Scotch for _everything,_ " Cassie says, snuggling closer.

"I like it," Dani says. "And then there's the espresso machine. That's um, well, I wasn't really expecting a present from Cam. So it's a little weird. But hey, once I figure out how to make it work, I won't have to go to Starbucks for espresso any more, so that's a pretty neat present."

"But you liked Teal'c's best," Cassie says.

_Yes. No. Yes._ It hurts the most, but it's also the most precious. She's not sure she'd explain that to Cassie even if she thought she'd understand. "Yeah. It's sort of a ... thing."

"A thing you used to do when Uncle Jack was alive?"

The fact Jack isn't—exactly—dead is classified.

"Yeah," she says. "Like that."

Cassie hugs her. "I'm glad you're doing it again. And I don't want you to die."

"I promise not to make it a permanent thing if it does happen, okay? Anyway, I fully intend to be around to see you graduate with honors from UCLA. Dr. Cassandra Frasier, the terror of all she surveys."

"Ha. You'll come visit?"

"I'm pretty sure they haven't barred me from the campus. I think it's the one university I actually managed to not get thrown out of."

Cassie snickers. "Think anybody remembers you there?"

_Vividly._ "I hope not."

When she comes out of Cassie's room, Cam and Teal'c are gone. "All quiet?" Sammy asks. Dani nods, and goes into the kitchen for more Scotch.

#

It's Monday, and she's looking for Sammy. There's email, the telephone, her pager, but Dani's always preferred to wander the halls. Having tried every logical possibility—including the Commissary—she winds up at the Infirmary. Maybe Sammy's got a headache.

No, but she's about to give Dani one.

Sammy's sitting on one of the beds in the Examination Room holding forth to a gaggle (three) of nurses, who are regarding her with rapt expressions—which Dani feels is odd, as she didn't think the nursing staff was that interested in particle physics. Then she gets closer.

"—and oh, my god, his _hands_. What that man can do with his _hands—!_ He is—oh, let me assure you, Cameron Mitchell is _definitely_ worth your time. There were times when we'd just spend the whole weekend in bed, and _not one minute_ of it was wasted. When he kisses you, he doesn't have anything else on his mind at all—nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, and—"

Dani stands, transfixed and unseen behind a privacy screen, as Sammy describes for her appreciative audience Cam's extensive and apparently well-honed charms. She's never heard Sammy sound like this before in her _life._

Of course, the two of them have never exactly discussed the joys of sex, either. Bad boyfriends and toxic breakups, yes. But not what was apparently the high point of Sammy's physical experience on this plane of existence.

Dani always thought _that_ was going through the Gate for the first time. She stands there until she realizes she's listening to Sammy describe _having sex with the man who is now their team leader_ , then she turns and flees.

#

"Sammy?" she says.

Sammy's at the house, Cassie's at the Mall, and the two of them have spent the morning hauling Dani's daybed out of storage and into the tiny back bedroom, which has been sitting completely empty for months, to start it on its conversion to a second guest room, because winter is coming and if all three of them have to sleep here Cam shouldn't have to sleep on the couch. And now it's time for coffee and cake. Bakery cake, but they all know she can't cook. (But Sammy's started cooking again, too, really cooking. She didn't for a while.)

"Hm?"

Sammy is sprawled out on the couch with a bottle of water in her hand, eyes closed. The coffee's brewing.

"You know that with Cam on SG-1 nobody can sleep with him, right?" Nobody on SG-1, at least, which pretty much means Sammy, because Teal'c's seeing Ish'ta these days and not only is Teal'c straight, Ish'ta's insanely jealous.

Sammy's eyes fly open. "Um ... where the hell did _that_ come from?"

Dani's not going to mention overhearing the conversation in the Infirmary. If Sammy wants to offer Cam out at stud, that's her _(their)_ business. Certainly he should have a social life. He isn't seeing anyone that she knows of. He _should_ see someone. Maybe then everyone from Suzanne Kiplinger to the latest Russian (Specialist Riazanova, SG-4) will stop coming down to Dani's office asking her for the best way to knock his feet out from under him.

God. Offer the man a lollipop. _Ask_ him. As far as she's been able to determine, Cameron Mitchell says "yes" to just about everything.

"Because I know the two of you used to be—"

"Friends? And we still are. Yours too."

She lets that pass for the moment. If she allows herself to be side-tracked into who is-and-is-not her friend, she'll never be able to get things straight with Sammy.

"But you can't—"

Sammy sits up and sighs. "Dani, the Fraternization Guidelines are wonderful things that prevent abuse in most commands. And they're also a pain in the ass. And not meant for our situation."

"But—" Sammy can't mean that.

Because they've never talked about it, none of them, but she _knows._ It's "hands off," and she's seen the Teams go down in flames that couldn't. Breakups, disappearances (resignations), and one or two "accidents." Of course they were. They weren't suicides.

If you're going to fuck, you go outside the Team. God help you if you don't. If you're married, you go home to your spouse. "Don't Ask Don't Tell?" Someone always does; the SGC is riddled with NID spies, and even though Kinsey's gone now, word always got back to him _(then),_ and it didn't matter who it was, military or civilian (or any combination), it was all an offense against Kinsey's version of God, and he didn't rest until the guilty had been hounded out of the Program. And maybe beyond. Dani doesn't know.

"Dani, there are _pages and pages_ of them, if you include the UCMJ. Every time the four of us went out to dinner at O'Malley's and Colonel O'Neill picked up the check, we were breaking them. Every time you spent the night in his guest room, or I spent the night on his floor, or Teal'c spent the night on his couch. All forbidden."

"But that's not sex," she says stubbornly, because all the Teams were always doing those things, and nobody ever said a word.

"No. And yes, the theory behind the Guidelines is that sex between people in the Chain of Command is messy and clouds your judgment. But the fact is, a Team that's been together in the field for a while couldn't be any closer if it _was_ all sleeping together. _We_ are."

Are? Were? She's not sure what to think of SG-1 these days. "Military. Rules." The military doesn't care about truth, she's discovered long since. It cares about rules.

Sammy smiles, and pats the couch, and she sits down. Sammy drapes an arm around her shoulder, and she snuggles up.

"Well, there've been a few changes in the way things are seen at the SGC since President Hayes took office and General Hammond went to run Homeworld," Sammy says simply. "General Hammond said—and President Hayes agreed—that the SGC can't afford to lose vital assets— _people_ —just because they're going to be ... people. Easier now that he dumped Kinsey," she adds darkly.

Dani's hated Kinsey from the moment she met him. Becoming a _Goa'uld_ hardly changed him at all. She's glad he's dead.

"So you and Cam are going to have sex," she says flatly.

Sammy squeezes her arm and sighs again. Apparently this conversation is exasperating, but Dani just wants things to be _clear._ If they're not going to lose any more people because of breaking a bunch of arbitrary _(idiotic)_ rules, good. But...

"Let's just say that if there _were_ sex—between anyone and anyone—the world would not end. So long as it didn't happen on the Gate Room ramp. Come on, Dani. Everybody's thought _we_ were having sex for years."

SG-1. The original (she won't say "real," not even in her mind; that's not fair) team. Oh yes, she heard all the gossip. From how well Teal'c was hung (speculation, locker room reports) to how lucky Jack was to have a team with _two_ women on it to what the four of them just _had_ to be getting up to on those offworld bivouacs. Even though half the people smirking around in corners were members of Gate Teams, and knew damned well that what they were "getting up to" was four-hour watch-on-watches and trying not to freeze or drown or fry or be eaten alive by alien bugs (the small annoying kind, not the kind big enough to shoot).

"Oh yeah. Usually you and me," she says.

Sammy snorts rudely. "So, you want to go for it? We can sell tickets."

_"Samantha Carter!_ I'll tell your father!"

Sammy laughs, and pats her thigh. "I bet the coffee's ready," she says, getting up.

Sammy never _did_ say about Cam.

#

They're in heavy rotation for the rest of July. Out twice a week, and that's just the scheduled missions. (Emergencies shoot the schedule all to hell.) Dani deals with it the way she always has: twelve, fourteen, fifteen hour days, a constant scramble to prep twenty-five SG Teams, backstop AA&T, and handle SG-1's work. She wonders if there's any way to smuggle Cam's present on-Base, because there sure as hell isn't enough caffeine in what she's getting out of the Commissary.

Cam is ... not hard to deal with, she decides tenatively, though with her schedule, she doesn't see a lot of him except on missions. Offworld, he's unfailingly cheerful, pleasant, helpful, and doesn't get in the way. He asks a lot of questions, but they aren't actually stupid ones.

Their mission to the Galarans went okay. It was a diplomatic mission—advanced culture, set up a trade agreement—and they'd been at a party discussing whether or not it was going to happen when she saw Cam about to leave with the chief scientist on the project that was the Galarans' chief talking point, a new kind of memory-stamp technology. She'd managed to get to them before he got away.

"Excuse me, Dr. Varrick, I just need a moment with Colonel Mitchell," she'd said. She'd taken him by the arm and walked him out of earshot. "No," she said.

He'd just looked at her and waited. She shook her head in frustration. "Memory stamp technology, and... just don't, okay?"

She'd expected a long argument about how the Galarans all seemed very nice (they did) and Dr. Varrick in particular seemed very nice (true) and how this was a chance to learn things they probably couldn't find out while she was surrounded by the military side of the program (also true). But he'd just smiled and said: "Sure."

And they'd all spent the night together in a lavish government guest-house where she and Sammy gave him the complete run-down on _Why Getting Your Memories Messed With Sucks_. And then they went home. As far as she knows, SG-9 is still there dickering, despite the recommendation in her mission report.

General Landry, she's decided, isn't a really good listener.

Despite their schedule, Cam still manages to find an apartment (since she spent a month living in on-Base housing not that long ago, she understands how he manages to make the time). Sammy threatens her with death if she doesn't come to Cam's apartment-warming, so she does. It's a little place, second floor, in the complex a lot of the unattached military stationed at Peterson and Cheyenne Mountain Air Base live in. He moves in the last week of July (they've done six missions by then, all with Sammy on point) and they all spend the day helping him unpack and shift furniture. She brings him two cases of Beers Of The World. Teal'c brings him a lamp with a gold-fringed pink silk shade. Sammy brings him six pairs of flannel boxer shorts with fighter planes on them. ("It gets cold here in the winter," she says innocently, and Cam just laughs).

The unpacking goes quickly—Cam and Sammy are both military brats, and god knows she's packed and unpacked enough apartments over the years (not just her own). Teal'c shows off, picking up and moving the couch into position all by himself—it's baroque and enormous, eight feet long, pale yellow chintz with a pattern of enormous pink cabbage roses all over it. ("Be careful with that!" Cam says. "It was a gift from my Aunt Aggie!") She thinks Aunt Aggie's sofa will make a lovely companion piece for Teal'c's lamp, actually, but Cam decides to put that in the bedroom. ("So I can savor it," he says.)

A lot of his furniture is new, still in boxes, assemble-it-yourself. Sam takes care of that while Dani translates the instructions, because the English ones make less sense than the Finnish (or the Japanese).

("I didn't know you knew Finnish," Sammy says. "Dr. Sorensen," she explains. Everybody swaps languages at the Friday night Geeks and Freaks mixers Level 19 holds. She picked up Finnish last year. "Well thank God for that," Sammy says. "I love IKEA, but sometimes...")

(It's a joke, Dani decides tentatively. IKEA instructions are in pictographs. This is something else.)

Endtables, bookshelves, entertainment center: once Sammy has those assembled, she arranges the electronics on the shelves and programs them and hooks up the cable.

"I knew there was a reason I loved you," Cam says, coming out of the kitchen. He puts an arm around Sammy and kisses the top of her head. He's wearing an apron.

"Mmm," Sammy says. "So what's for dinner?"

The kitchen was the first thing they unpacked.

Dinner sounds as if it will take a while. Longer than she wants to spend here, actually. It isn't that she doesn't like Cam (or like him; he's just _there_ ), but she doesn't do normal well.

Not any more.

"I really ought to—" she says.

Both of them round on her.

"Oh, no way!" Cam says. "Miss out on my cooking? 'Sides, when was the last time you had a decent meal?"

"I eat in the Commissary every day," she protests. Pretty much. When she remembers. And her desk drawers are stocked with Powerbars and chocolate for when she forgets.

"That is not food," Cam says firmly. "Nope. Not letting you leave until I feed you. Sam, get her keys. You want something to do while you're waiting, you can come help me in the kitchen."

"Boxes," she says, because there are still several piled here in the living room waiting to be unpacked. Sammy takes her keys anyway. "It isn't fair," Dani says, opening the first of the remaining boxes. Books and DVDs.

"It is appropriate to devote a certain portion of one's free time to rest and relaxation," Teal'c says. He joins her on the floor, opening the rest of the boxes.

"Oh, yeah, like I've _got_ free time." She sighs.

"Colonel Mitchell has organized a basketball league," Teal'c offers. "Perhaps you should consider participating."

She blinks, and looks away from the videos in her hands— _Top Gun, Monty Python and the Holy Grail_ —to stare at Teal'c. "In a _basketball tournament?_ Oh, I don't think so. I'm really not interested in getting beaten up by a bunch of Marines."

"I do not believe Colonel Mitchell would allow that to occur. Nor would Colonel Carter. Nor would I."

She sighs. "Yeah, I know. But ... basketball. Not gonna happen."

"Colonel Mitchell is also eager to learn the traditional combat forms of the Jaffa. I believe you would be the best teacher for him." Teal'c isn't giving up on… whatever he isn't giving up on. She studies his face. Nope, no clue there. 

"You mean I'm less likely to kill him immediately?"

Teal'c smiles faintly. "Perhaps."

"I'll pencil it in."

Teal'c inclines his head. "I shall so inform Colonel Mitchell."

No way to get out of it now.

Sammy was right. He's a good cook.

#

August. She spends a lot of time working out. Since last March, working out has taken the place of all the things she no longer does. Chess. Long Saturday afternoons (tense, comfortable, boring) watching hockey. She and Teal'c fight all-out (he pulls his strikes, but only enough not to break bones), because if she meets a Jaffa in the field, that's no time to find out she isn't good enough.

If she's going to work out with Cam, she figures she owes him a chance to back out.

"No matter what you see, stay on the damned bench," she tells Cam, because the last thing she wants is to have him rush in at a critical moment and actually get hurt.

But to her surprise, when the match is over (ending the way it usually does, her down and disarmed and Teal'c ordering her to yield), Cam is still sitting rock-still on the bench.

Grinning like a loon.

"Oh, _man_. You're gonna teach me all that stuff? Right?"

She limps over to the bench—Teal'c took her out with an ankle-strike today—and pulls off her helmet. "Jaffa warriors start training before they can walk."

"They do not, Danielle Jackson. It is necessary to be able to stand to hold a _bashaak_ , as you are aware," Teal'c says.

"But still," Cam says to Teal'c, "You've been doing this for a pretty long time."

Teal'c smiles. She can see it in the mirror. "For nearly one hundred years, Colonel Mitchell."

"Oh, then you've just _got_ to be good! And what about Dani? She's good, right?"

"Oh for crying out loud," Dani mutters.

"For a _Tau'ri_ of her limited training and experience, she is quite good, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says. "When she has completed your preliminary education, I will be pleased to face you in practice combat."

She pulls off the plastron and inspects her ribs. "Do you _like_ bruises, Cam?" she asks. There's going to be a gorgeous one there in the morning, even through the padding.

"Figure they come with the territory," he says. "Anything worth having is worth paying for, my gran'ma says."

"Indeed," Teal'c agrees.

#

They stand on the mat in one of the practice rooms. Sweats, head-protectors, chest-protectors. Both holding quarterstaffs.

"Do you have any experience with something that isn't a gun?" she asks.

"Did a little fencing in college," he says. "That was a while back. I'm pretty rusty."

"This is pretty much nothing like that," she says, trying not to sound as dismissive as she feels. "We're starting with quarterstaffs because they're lighter. When you master the basics, we'll switch to the wooden practice staffs, the _bashaak_. They're weighted like an actual staff-weapon. While the staff weapon's primary use is as a distance-weapon, they're also designed to be used at close-quarters."

"Kinda like a bayonet on a rifle?"

"More or less. The spatulate tip on the non-powered end is designed to enter a symbiote pouch and rip out the symbiote. It sends the victim into shock if you can hit them hard enough, but most humans can't. Okay. Now. Find the balance point—"

He's quick and he's smart—and graceful—but quarterstaff took her years to become expert in. He doesn't give up, and he doesn't sulk, either. He gets points for that.

"Okay," she says, after half an hour of the basics. "Hit me."

"Uh ... come again?"

"I'm pretty sure you won't drop it. Hit me."

He swings it up—slower than he could; ragged form—and she backs out of the way and just helps it along. It's a classic disarm, but it doesn't work. He shifts his grip on the fly and brings it down—faster this time—and she actually has to block. They spar at three-quarter speed for a few minutes before she comes in under his guard and simply trips him. He still doesn't let go of the staff, though, so they both go down.

"I think we're both dead," he says, laughing.

"I don't know. Can you shoot me from here?" Her staff is between them. "I can shoot you."

He lets go of his staff and she rolls away. He's still looking pleased.

"That ever work against a Jaffa?" he asks.

"Hand-to-hand against a Jaffa and I'd be dead," she says. "But I've managed to disarm a few. It's a good start. You'll be ready for Teal'c soon."

"You'll tell him to go easy on me, right?"

"Oh, sure. As easy as he goes on me."

Cam just grins.

#

"Dr. Jackson doesn't know anything," Colonel Hopkins says. They're at lunch; part of Cam's orientation is rotating through a series of "Getting To Know You" lunches with all the other team leaders on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Colonel Hopkins is SG-14.

Cam finds this statement a little odd, since in his scant few weeks at the SGC, Dr. Jackson—Dani—has done nothing but demonstrate (to him) that she knows things. Vast random uncatalogued stores of things that spill out of her in no particular order. At lunch one day, in the Commissary, the history and evolution of the fork: _"—from the Latin_ furca _: used by the Greeks to serve food; by the ancient Hebrews—though not to serve food—"_ She talks about things he knows—the history of military heraldry (something she rattles off absently, looking at the brand spanking new SG-1 patch on his shoulder, her mind elsewhere)—about things he's never imagined—the social purpose of sex in _Goa'uld_ courts (that's either shocking or disgusting or just scary; he still hasn't decided). She talks without any particular regard for whether the person standing there will understand her, as if her mind is stuffed so full it's all going to spill out anyway. (Although Cam thinks—hopes—she talks more to him than to anyone else, that she wants him to know all she can teach him.)

But he's the new kid on the block, still fitting in. He's going to choose his fights, not pick them, at least for a while. "Oh?" he says.

"Ask her for a simple answer to a simple question and she starts telling you a bunch of stuff that nobody needs to know," Hopkins says, "and if you're lucky, you might find the answer to your original question somewhere in there an hour or so later—if you can stay awake. I sent Major Stearne to her last year for a refresher course—the briefing book on the snakes needs updating and nobody qualified has time—and he said she was useless."

Major Sterne is SG-14's Cultural Specialist. Dani's opposite number. And Cam just thinks Major Sterne wasn't listening.

#

He comes down to Sam's office around fifteen hundred. It's become something of a routine. Cam likes dropping by in the afternoon, when they're on-Base and not scrambling. Sam's lab is restful, at least when she's not in the middle of trying to blow them all up. Then, of course, it's fascinating. Little Miss's office is fascinating in an entirely different way. Nothing likely to blow up there but her, and the sorrowful thing is that the only thing she minds him touching are the only things that won't break: the collection of stuffed toys on top of her file cabinet.

Today Sam is sitting at her workbench, with that Ancient doohickey that looks like a typewriter in front of her. It's hooked up to her laptop, but she isn't doing anything much with it. Just staring off into space. Thinking thinky thoughts, as Momma would say.

He's about to leave—doesn't want to joggle her elbow—but she raises a hand and beckons him in. "Penny for 'em," he says.

"Nothing that earth-shattering," she says. "Just thinking about you."

"Flattered, I guess," he says, and Sam smiles.

"I admit I was worried about you," she says, and Cam raises an eyebrow. "But you fit in well."

He thinks he understands. Joining a team like SG-1 ... it's a little like getting married. A lot like getting married, really. Especially if you're coming in to take command. Which, if they're all honest about things, he pretty much has: both he and Sam have tacitly agreed Joint Command is a damfool notion that ought to be allowed to die a quiet death.

And in a situation like that—coming in, new guy—there's always a possibility people might resent the ... new spouse.

Not Sam. They've got their shared history to smooth the rough spots. Teal'c's solid, too. Kinda weird, but a stand-up guy; Cam learned quickly you get what you give with Teal'c. And he's older than Cam's great-granddad. This isn't the first time Teal'c's had a new CO.

That just leaves their bottle of nitroglycerine.

He's heard all the gossip. Discounted most of it. But what was left was enough to tell him Little Miss and Batshit Jack O'Neill were wrapped around each other tighter than a pair of fighting kittens. Scratch one and the other one bled.

He hasn't gotten any of this from Sam. Too smart to notice, and too good to pass on bad gossip, he thinks. Or possibly she didn't see it at all. Sometimes Sam's not as smart as she ought to be about people. She's got a good heart, but she's dealing with the whole Jacob Carter problem (Cam met him once, and was neither terrified nor impressed: a fine officer, but a touch too spit-and-polish for Cam's liking. And he didn't seem to understand what Cam's family always had, that you leave your rank at the door when you go home to your family) and the Academy didn't do her any favors. Cam's been thawing the Ice Princess for years, and he's been both pleased and surprised by a lot of the changes in her over the last decade. He didn't understand them until he met Dani and Teal'c, but he thinks he'd _really_ understand them only if he'd gotten the chance to meet Colonel O'Neill.

"Well, that's good to hear," he says noncommittally.

Sam sighs, and runs a hand through her hair, something he's seen Little Miss do a thousand times when she's thinking of what to say. The two of them—and probably the four of them, making allowances for Teal'c—probably pretty much picked up each other's ways of things over the years, living in each others' pockets the way they did. More missions than any other Gate Team. And the best survival rate. Even the last one didn't exactly kill O'Neill.

"Well, you've gotten to know Dani by now," Sam says. Getting closer to the point. He knows there's more to this conversation than Sam just telling him everything's going to be fine.

"A bit. Still like to know her better," he says.

She swivels around in her chair and stares at him. _"Cam,"_ she says in disbelief. And it's not because he's breaking the rules. The rules have changed. "You can't possibly be serious," Sam says, cutting to the chase because they've already covered everything up to this point, the part that goes (pretty much) _"I was really worried that on one of our offworld missions Dani was going to whip out her pistol and shoot you in the back of the head, but it's been a few weeks now and I think she's going to let you live."_ "We've been over this. Cam, she's—"

"Smart. Pretty. Not seeing anybody."

"Crazy, foul-mouthed, bad-tempered. I love her, but— She's not exactly the kind of girl you take home to Mother."

"Now c'mon, Sam. You've met my family."

Sam smiles, but she doesn't look convinced. "Cam, believe me. You don't want to go there. She'll cut you to pieces."

"Oh, I believe she could." She's pretty much like a cross between one of his eight-year-old cousins and Aunt Aggie's bad-tempered Siamese as often as not. There are times when he's pretty sure that if she could just hide under the nearest piece of furniture and hiss at everybody who came near her, she would. But then there are the other times, when she's on her game with somebody, or working out some puzzle or other, or explaining something to him (that he's never in a million years going to understand, because half the time she completely forgets she isn't talking to one of her pet specialists and about the only thing he follows is the part where she says "but of course you know," and of course he doesn't), and she just sparkles like Christmas morning.

"You haven't ... _said_ anything to her, have you?" Sam asks.

"I figured I'd wait for the right time," he answers.

Sam sighs, and looks at him, and says, very seriously: "Cam, you know I love you, right?"

And he smiles back at her and says, "Sure. I know that."

"I'm telling you. This isn't a good idea."

And he nods—he does hear what she's telling him—and says, "Well, babe, you know I've never been all that smart."

"She'll have a _fit._ "

He shrugs. "She'll get over it. Or won't."

#

SG-16 is a six-man Science and Engineering Unit: when the SGC finds something really cool that will take a while to dismantle and ship home, it sends SG-16. Three civilians—Doctors Sardoni, Cook, and Rosenberg—cover Archaeo-Anthropology, Chemistry, and Physics. Specialist Chin is their engineer. They're led by Major Wolfe, with Lieutenant Behrens to handle the military heavy-lifting. Dani spent two months with them at the beginning of the year, adding Linguistics to the mix, but since the beginning of June they've been on P48-782 dismantling a mint-condition (and completely deserted) _Goa'uld_ palace. Since all of the inscriptions they sent home indicate the place belonged to Osiris, they're pretty sure it's safe to loot (Osiris being a done deal). Daily check-ins when the SGC calls. Business as usual.

Only now it's August, and SG-1 is sitting around the Briefing Room table, and General Landry is telling them SG-16's last check-in was fifteen minutes ago, and garbled all to hell (he doesn't say that, but he plays them the tape, and it is) and they can't even tell who's transmitting, but whoever it is sounds terrified, and they're calling for help and saying Major Wolfe is dead and somebody's missing.

That's all.

"It could be a trap, sir," Cam says slowly.

"Indeed. If another _Goa'uld_ has chosen to claim Osiris's former possessions—" That's Teal'c.

"But they shouldn't know about this place!" Dani says. "I went to see Simon when we identified it. I showed him the pictures. He was pretty sure he remembered that Osiris had managed to keep it a secret from the other _Goa'uld_."

"'Pretty sure' isn't good enough," Cam says.

"Cam's right," Sammy says. "If—"

"Doesn't matter," General Landry says. "I'm sending you to 782 to bring SG-16 home. Colonel Mitchell will have command on this one. You leave in fifteen minutes. There's no time to waste on this one."

There's a beat of silence. She looks at Sammy. The Galarans, okay; that was a meet'n'greet and there wasn't any shooting. But 782 has already gone south in the worst possible way: Major Wolfe is dead and they don't even know what's there.

"Okay, folks, let's go," Cam says, getting to his feet. "Fifteen minutes. We're on the clock."

#

She stops by her office to grab her pack and heads—at a run—for the gear-up room. No time to be scared now (no time to wish General Landry was sending a _real_ Gate Team instead of one with a New Guy who used to be a pilot, because Dani loves Sammy, but Sammy is an adequate tactician, not a great one). In her head, she's going over everything she remembers about 782. She opens her locker and grabs her hat, then goes to the hangars for her jacket and vest. As she laces everything into place she delivers all the briefing they have time for: location of the Stargate in relation to the complex, purpose of the complex, local geography (red rock and dust) and weather (wind). "—so we think it was a site Osiris developed after his escape from Earth and also after his alliance with Anubis; Dr. Rosenberg was pretty sure he was using it to retro-engineer devices he'd captured from other _Goa'uld_ , to figure out how to duplicate them. Or maybe just stockpiling his loot for trade purposes."

"Come on," Cam says. 

_Decision's made. Move out._

#

They go through the Gate. The familiar pyramid is on the horizon about a mile away. The MALP's still there—a radio-transmission from inside the pyramid would reach it (which makes it even more disturbing that what they got was so garbled). Nobody dialed out to call for help: they waited for the SGC to dial in on the usual schedule even though they were in trouble. That means they're trapped.

"Teal'c, point," Cam says. They move out. Sam walks drag. Dani's in her usual place, but this time it feels unnatural somehow. They find Major Wolfe first. 

He's been hung in one of the thornbushes that are the principal flora of 782. He's naked. His throat's been slashed from ear to ear, and he's been eviscerated. 

"He was carried here," Teal'c says calmly. "By something that left no trace."

The ground is dark, the mud already dry. Brought here alive. Killed _in situ_.

"Dani?" Cam says.

She knows what he wants. Not "how"—that's obvious—but "why". And what does it tell them? "Guessing," she says tightly. "Warning behavior—aboriginal behavior—we've seen this sort of injury pattern before. Someone thought he was either a _Goa'uld_ or a Jaffa."

Sammy looks past Major Wolfe's body. "Oh, God," she says quietly.

There's another body about six hundred yards away. They approach it cautiously. Lieutenant Behrens. He's been treated the same way.

"Okay," Cam says. "The tape said Wolfe was dead and someone—Behrens—was missing." He looks at her. Wanting answers, wanting a scenario, and it's too familiar, and it hurts.

She shuts the thought away. _Focus_. "Major Wolfe was killed right there," she says. "How did they know he was dead?"

"Come on," Cam says.

#

It's an hour later, and they're inside Osiris's complex, and if she could figure out _which Goa'uld_ invented the phase-shifting-technology-that-drives-you-mad, she'd really like to thank them.

Sardoni and Rosenberg are both missing. One or both is—probably—a deranged killer. SG-1 has managed to find Chin and Cook. The two of them are barricaded into Osiris's throne room. Cook is hysterical, and Chin's been injured fending off an attack getting them here to safety. She's got a deep gash to the leg, and she's lost a lot of blood, but Cam's able to get Cook to unlock the door for them and then tell them what they're up against as Sammy bandages Chin's leg.

"I need to get down to the lab," Sammy says, standing up. "If Osiris captured the phase-shifting device, there are probably work-notes on how to counter-act it. Come on, Dani."

She's trying to pry Cook loose so she can get to her feet, when Cam's voice stops both of them.

"No, Sam," he says. "First we get these people home."

"He won't let you, oh, he won't let you, oh, Colonel, you don't know—" Cook says.

"Sam?" Cam says.

"Right," Sammy says, nodding.

Dani feels oddly as if everybody in the room has gone crazy but her. Because Sammy's acting as if it's _okay_ for Cam to give her orders, and Teal'c doesn't seem to want to argue either, or tell him he can't. And Cam isn't making any big thing out of it either. He's already moved on.

"Now Doc, you don't have to worry about a thing," Cam says. "You're going to be home for dinner and everything's going to be just fine."

It isn't.

It takes them twenty minutes to talk Dr. Cook into leaving the throne room, and by the time they do, it's too damned late. They open the door, and a ... shadow ... swoops in, and Cook screams like a goddamned _girl_ and goes running off and then there's something none of them can see in there with them and suddenly Cam's bleeding. Dani swings with her quarterstaff, cursing all _Goa'uld_ and their idiot habit of lighting everything with _torches_ and she _almost_ hits something—squishy, Jell-O, her staff moves through it—and Cam is yelling for Teal'c to get the curtains, get the curtains—

And Teal'c does, ripping them down from behind the throne, and Cam fires off a blast from his P90—toward the ceiling, won't hit anything but he doesn't mean it to—and the shadow is moving and Teal'c flings several hundred yards of gold velvet like he's laying out a tablecloth and it hits the floor and there's a moving lump underneath and he zats the lump and it stops moving.

" _Move,_ people," Cam barks.

She and Sam drag Chin out the door. The lump is already starting to twitch.

"Any way to lock this from the outside?" Cam asks, when the door is shut.

Teal'c raises his staff-weapon and blasts it. "Yes," he says.

Cam smiles, just for a moment. Not much to smile about, this trip. And Chin said they already sealed all the other entrances to the throne room, so if there are two of those shadow things (crazed scientists), they've trapped one.

Cam's sleeve is soaked in blood. "Stop bleeding," she snaps. Sammy's already getting out her medical kit again.

"It's just a flesh wound," he says.

"What now?" Sammy asks. He can't take everything off so she can get to the skin; not here and now; Sammy slaps the field dressing on over his jacket and shirt and winds it with tape. He flexes his arm, testing it.

"We're gonna find Dr. Cook. You and Dani start back for the Gate with Chin. Take the zat. If you don't see anything, shoot it."

"Cam—"

"I know. Tell General Landry we need a couple more zats—and a net and a paintball gun, if he's got them on-hand."

#

She's supporting Chin, who isn't helping much, but fortunately they're about the same size. Sammy's got the zat and a worried expression. They make the Gate without getting killed, which is the first thing that's gone right today. General Landry is gratifyingly prompt in fulfilling their demands, but they still spend ten minutes Earthside before they can get back. God only knows where he found paintball guns. Two of them. The net is heavy. They step through the Gate and run.

Cam and Teal'c are heading toward them at a jog. Teal'c has Dr. Cook slung over his shoulder. She wonders if he's dead.

_"Cam!"_ Sammy shouts. Dani looks up. There's a darkness in the air, and Sammy fires. The zat's blue lightning outlines a human shape hovering in the air about fifteen feet up. It falls heavily, becoming visible. Dr. Sardoni.

"Guess you found the off-switch," Cam says, when the two of them get there.

Teal'c drops Dr. Cook without ceremony (apparently he's still alive, which is nice), and lifts Dr. Sardoni to his feet. Cam quick-ties his hands behind his back. Sardoni's wearing an ornate gold belt with a large blue jewel in the middle.

"Let me take a look at this," Sammy says. "Okay." She presses something on the side of the buckle—it looks like every _Goa'uld_ device ever made—and the catch springs open. She holds it gingerly, as if it's a snake.

"Let's get these guys home," Cam says. "We'll debrief, and then figure out how to get Dr. Rosenberg back."

#

Getting Dr. Rosenberg back involves hazmat gear, gas grenades, an EMP Generator, a large amount of fine powder, and SG-5. Cam should be in the damned infirmary—he needed twelve stitches to close the gash in his arm—but he isn't. First they flood the complex with sleeping gas, then they open the throne room, then they toss powder around until they find Dr. Rosenberg. Then Sammy fries his belt. Sammy theorizes the phase-shift isn't a complete one, which is why they were able to affect the people wearing belts. At any rate, everyone's accounted for. All that's left is to recover the dead, but General Landry has sent SG-12 after them to do mop-up. 782 is safe again.

"I hate this part," Cam says quietly.

They sent Dr. Rosenberg home with SG-3 and stayed on-world with SG-12. It's taken a while, but Major Wolfe and Lieutenant Behrens are going home. She's not sure what to say. _Get used to it? At least there will be bodies to bury?_ It seems cruel. So she doesn't say anything.

"Come on," Sammy says when they turn to follow the other team through the Gate. "Let's get you checked out and then I'll buy you a drink."

Cam turns and they follow, and, well, they've done that before, but this time, somehow, it's different. This time they're following him because they're _following_ him.

Because he's their leader.

She isn't sure how she feels about that.

It's after 2300 by the time everything's over and done. Drs. Rosenberg and Sardoni are under heavy sedation in Secured Medical, and Dr. Warner hopes the effect of the technology they both decided to field-test (god knows why) will wear off so they can explain what happened: before they were sedated, both of them were raving in fluent _Goa'uld_ , and neither of them knows the language.. 

She's gone back to her office with a copy of the tape from Secured Medical. Maybe figuring out what they're saying will help; the snatches she heard were something about "kill all enemies," and the way they killed Wolfe and Behrens just doesn't make _sense_....

Cook and Chin will be de-briefed tomorrow, and maybe the SGC will be able to get a better idea of what happened on 782 then. Or maybe it won't.

"Dani. Go home." Cam's come into her office. Civilian clothes. Ready to leave. He looks exhausted.

She props her elbows on her desk, pushes her glasses up, and rubs her eyes. " _You_ go home," she says.

"I will if you will," he says, sitting down in a chair.

"I'm going soon," she says.

"That's good," he says, leaning back. "I'll just wait here for you."

She settles her glasses back and peers at him. "That's blackmail," she says slowly.

"Nope," he says. "Not if you're leaving. I'll walk you out."

"Sammy's buying you a drink," she points out.

"Yeah, so we better hurry. Bars close soon."

"I have to change," she says.

"Yup," he agrees blandly. "Can't go out wearing that."

"You go ahead. I'll catch up."

"Uh-huh," he says, and doesn't move.

About the time he closes his eyes and settles even further into the chair she realizes that nothing short of physical force is going to dislodge Cameron Mitchell from her office unless she leaves too. She growls and tosses the tape in the drawer of her desk and stands up.

"We leaving already?" he asks innocently.

"Come on."

#

"I'm impressed," Sammy says, when the two of them join her at the elevator.

"About that drink," Cam says. "I figured we could just go back to my place. I hate being thrown out of bars."

Dani shakes her head. "Mine's closer," she says. "Come on."

#

By the time they get in and settled and she's deployed the beer and chips it's midnight, and two beers (and Sammy bitching at Cam to for God's sake take the T3s already twelve stitches isn't a goddamned flesh wound) later it's one in the morning and pretty stupid for anybody to go anywhere and Cam can't possibly drive in any case. They're on stand-down anyway, and Sammy called Cassie the moment they got back, so Cassie knows everything's fine.

So it's sometime after three, when Dani wakes herself up drawing breath to scream. She chokes it back, sitting up. Sammy's in one guestroom and Cam's in the other. Oh, god, did anybody hear anything?

Maybe not. The bedroom door is closed and she's installed an industrial-quality white noise system. Not only does it make the bedroom completely surveillance-proof (not that that matters much), it protects the neighbors' delicate sensibilities. She shuts it off to check. No, the house seems to be quiet. She looks at the clock. Three entire hours of sleep. And she can't go out to the kitchen and make coffee. She has ... guests.

She turns on the light and reads. At dawn she opens her bedroom door a crack, and when she hears Sammy moving around, she gets up.

#

Cam is outraged by the state of her kitchen. Specifically, her larder. He expands on the subject at length over breakfast (at her favorite diner; Cassie drives over to join them) and even with Sammy taking her side (for once) pointing out that she Does Not Cook, he's unimpressed.

"You could _starve_ to death!" he says.

"I have cookies," she says. "I have the all-night pizza delivery on speed-dial. I know every takeout place within twenty-five miles. I have coffee."

"You are _not_ eating right," he says firmly. "My momma always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day."

"I'm eating breakfast," she points out. "I eat breakfast. You've seen me eat breakfast."

"Commissary food—"

"—is not food," she and Sammy finish in chorus, and Cassie giggles. "It's _fine,_ " she adds.

"Baby, I have just _got_ to feed you one of my special breakfasts one of these days," he says mournfully. She stares at him in disbelief, a forkful of waffles halfway to her mouth.

Did he just call her "baby?"

#

A week later Sammy says firmly they're going to have Team Night. It's the first one in a year and a half, and she _looks_ at Dani and Dani can't say anything, including that she has pressing business on the other side of the universe that night.

Cam is told the rules: one person picks the theme, another person picks the movies. They draw straws _(used to draw straws)_ and everyone cheats _(used to cheat)_ wildly. Sammy says this time Cam will get to pick the movies, since it's his first Team Night.

"Well, in that case, I think Dani should get to pick the theme. I mean, hate to bore her."

"Detective films," she says promptly, because those are Teal'c's favorite.

Cam grins. "I already got a list in mind."

He says it has to be at his place because he has the biggest television. Sammy tells Dani not to eat anything before she comes (which makes no sense to her at all; Movie Night is chips and pretzels and dip). When she and Teal'c arrive, Cam's frying chicken (Sammy lets them in), and the movies laid out on the couch are _Shaft, Cleopatra Jones,_ and _Chinatown._

"Oh my God," Sammy says, laughing.

"Classics!" Cam calls from the kitchen. Teal's smiles. He adores _Chinatown._

"He's _cooking,_ " Dani says, stunned.

"Tell me you didn't eat on the way over," Sammy says.

"Well, I, but—" 

_"Dani!_ " Sammy wails.

"What?" Cam's come out of the kitchen.

"She ate," Sammy says.

Cam stares at her, and he looks absolutely heartbroken. "Baby, didn't I tell you I was going to feed you? You gotta trust me."

She keeps trying to find a good way—and a good moment—to explain she is not his "baby"—that she is not, and never has been, _anyone's_ "baby"—but it never seems to be quite possible.

"I didn't eat that much," she says. Really just a couple of candybars on her way to pick up Teal'c. And a muffin to go with her coffee. "I'm hungry. Honest." Okay, only sort of. Not really. But that fried chicken smells damned good.

Cam looks relieved. "Okay then! C'mon, get yourself a beer."

Once she gets into the kitchen, she can smell something else cooking besides the chicken. "Cake?" she asks, sniffing.

He grins over his shoulder. There's an iron skillet full of oil on the stove and two plates beside it. One has crispy fried chicken on it. The other is still heaped with raw chicken. She wonders how many people he thought were coming.

"Cake's over there. Cornbread's in the oven. Can't have fried chicken without cornbread. I mean, if you aren't having biscuits."

The man's demented.

She eyes the cake.

"You stay away from that until after dinner."

"Cornbread?" Sammy walks past her to open the refrigerator. "Oh, Cam—you made the potato salad!"

"Great-Aunt Louisa's secret recipe, and no matter what you do, Samantha Carter, you will never get it out of me. Never."

Sammy chuckles evilly, and takes two beers and a bottle of apple juice out of the fridge. Dani peers over her shoulder. It's completely filled with, well, _food._

"Pretty soon now," Cam says.

It's about another fifteen minutes, and by the time they're sitting around Cam's tiny kitchen table, she's really regretting either the candy bars or the muffin or, actually, _both._

"I _warned_ you," Sammy hisses, studying her expression.

"Now, I don't want to see any fighting at the dinner table," Cam says. "What would Momma say?"

"She'd tell us to take it outside," Sammy says promptly.

"That's right," Cam says, without missing a beat. "And then the fried chicken would get cold, and who knows? I might have to throw it out."

"Cam, you're demented," Sammy says.

Yeah, they've all got that by now.

"The only thing better than hot fried chicken is— _oooh_ —cold fried chicken," Sammy says. She bites into a drumstick and looks as if she's having a, well, call it a religious experience. Cam winks at her.

"Gonna have to go on a picnic, then," he says. "Labor Day. I'll make Cousin Stuckey's Last Chance Watermelon, and—hey. You know any place around here to get really good corn on the cob?"

"We'll have to _crawl_ home," Sammy says, and it turns out Cousin Stuckey's Watermelon involves vodka and strawberry schnapps.

"For what is this watermelon the last chance?" Teal'c asks.

Cam looks a little nonplussed—Teal'c speaks flawless English but his grasp of vernacular and metaphor is probably always going to be a little shaky—and glances at Sammy for help.

"You started it," Sammy says remorselessly.

"Well, you see, Teal'c, the whole idea is, you eat a slice of this watermelon with your girl, and you're probably going to get lucky," Cam says. He doesn't seem embarrassed at all, but his explanation isn't helping Teal'c much.

"The watermelon is intoxicating because of the inclusion of the alcohol," Dani says. "The two people who eat it together will get drunk and—conceivably—have sex."

Teal'c regards Cam. "The males of your family must drug women in order to induce them to engage in sexual activity?"

"Whoa!" Cam says, sputtering. He gets his hand over his mouth, then his napkin, but beer runs down his chin. Score one for Teal'c. He waited until Cam was drinking.

_"No!"_ he says. He looks at Teal'c, and she sees the moment when he _gets_ that Teal'c was, well, pulling his leg. Without missing a beat, he goes on. "Except maybe Cousin Alvin. Did I ever tell you about Cousin Alvin, Sam? Maybe not. We don't talk about Cousin Alvin much. Anyway, I remember the time—"

Cam tells a long involved story about a Cousin Alvin that Dani's pretty sure not only isn't true, but is about someone who doesn't exist in the first place. But Sammy's laughing, and even Teal'c smiles just a little. It's possible Cousin Alvins are universal.

Dani eats three pieces of chicken and a piece of hot cornbread and a scoop of potato salad and feels like a python that's ingested a particularly large—though really tasty—pig. And oh god, they haven't even gotten to the cake yet.

Teal'c eats eight pieces of chicken, two enormous slabs of corn bread dripping with butter, and goes back for a third helping on the potato salad.

Then it's time for movies. They start with the one none of the rest of them has seen— _Cleopatra Jones_ —though really, the point of Movie Night isn't really whether they've seen the movies before or not. There used to be some of them they'd watch every year…

"I'll have to make you a list," Sammy says. She's snuggled up against Cam again. Really. The man seems to be a human throw-pillow. He's bought a chair, at least, since the last time Dani was here, so she takes that. Teal'c takes the other end of the couch. "Dani _loves_ movies about Ancient Egypt. She's seen them all."

"Under protest!" Dani snaps. _The Mummy_ (and sequels), _Cleopatra_ (every single version), _Sudan, The Egyptian, Land of the Pharaohs..._

"And _you_ like musicals," Cam says. "I remember. Gene Kelley. So... if what Dani likes is historicals, how come I got three detective movies?"

"Teal'c likes them," she says promptly.

Cam makes an exaggerated face of betrayal. "You mean you _cheated?_ " he demands.

"Welcome to SG-1," Dani says, raising her beer.

She falls asleep halfway through the movie—too much food; chronically short on sleep—and wakes up halfway through _Chinatown._

She gets up—stiff, stretching.

"Hey, you're up," Cam says. "We're just getting to the good part. You want to get us all another beer?"

So she does—new round all around; juice for Teal'c—and when she comes back, Cam says the couch is more comfortable (having slept in the chair, she's pretty sure it is) and you get a better view of the screen (inarguable) so after she hands around the bottles (three beers, one apple juice), she sits down next to Teal'c.

After the credits roll, Cam unwinds himself from Sammy. "Cake," he says.

#

"It's red," Dani says, poking at it with her fork.

"It's Red Velvet Cake," Cam says. "'Course it is. Family recipe. Lots'a cooks'll just make it red with food coloring. Momma'd whomp me if I ever did anything like that. Nope. Grenadine. And a dash of cola syrup to give it that extra sweet bite. Wouldn't be Southern Cooking without Co'Cola."

"You've got to try his Coca Cola Cake," Sammy says.

"I'll make that next time," Cam promises. "And why don't you bring Cassie along, Sam? Kid's family."

Sammy looks surprised. "I ... sure. If she doesn't have other plans."

"Well, I'll just send a big chunk of cake home with you for her. Might be an inducement."

#

Their next Team Night is at Cam's, too—Cassie _does_ come—and by the third one (September), Dani realizes not only is there going to be Team Night (every other Friday, when they're onworld and off-Base), it's going to be at Cam's all the time. It just is.

She isn't entirely sure about how she feels about that. Not quite three months, and she can't name a day when he was more a part of the team or less of one. He never apologizes for being there. He never lords it over them. He's just ... there.

Not really in the way.

#

September. They're all sitting in the Commissary together—table in the corner, out of the way, out of sight; they're going to be here a while because Sammy's lab is currently closed for repairs (ouch) and Dani's office is completely occupied with a project Nyan is cataloguing. They have a breathing space, so they're going through old mission files to see what they should suggest to General Landry really needs a follow-up mission. (Aside from, well, probably everything.) Dani's still trying to figure out a way to contact the Nox, because it's been almost a year and a half and she hates to think of Jack waking up to find out so much time has passed. Even if they won't help directly, the Nox might at least agree to help her contact the Asgard.

SG-3 comes walking in. Colonel Reynolds and his Marines, Bosco, Peterson, and Warren.

"He makes it past ninety, you're gonna lose that bet, sir," Bosco is saying.

"You think SG-1's gotten tired of killing off its commanders yet? I don't," Reynolds answers. All four of them laugh. Teal'c starts to get to his feet.

"I got it," Cam says.

He walks over to SG-3, and he isn't hurrying, but he catches up to them before they've gotten very far.

"Colonel Reynolds."

Reynolds stops. Sees who it is. His face goes blank.

"Colonel Mitchell."

"Yeah. You might want to go a little easy on that kind of talk around here."

"Just a joke, Colonel."

"Not a funny one. And if General Landry found out you guys were betting, well, I'm not sure how he feels about gambling. But if I _did_ know, well, I'd be kinda tempted to go in on Bosco's side of things in a big way."

Reynolds is looking wary. Cam has this ... focused ... expression on his face. It's as close to angry as she's ever seen him, but he isn't, exactly. Closer to stern.

"Hard for you to pay up if you lose."

And Cam smiles, sunny and easy. "I figure my team's got my back, just like they did Colonel Polanco's and Colonel O'Neill's. Which is why I won't lose."

And Reynolds takes a step back, as if maybe Cam's said something else entirely. "Colonel," he says.

"Colonel," Cam says, nodding. He comes back and sits down, and the Marines head on to the serving line.

"Do they really think—" Sammy says angrily.

"Just hot air," Cam says easily.

"I knew—after we lost Colonel Polanco—there was—" Sammy stops.

Dani shrugs and sips her coffee, not looking at anybody. They'd all heard the gossip about being jinxed. Everybody says those things (quietly) when a Team has a run of bad luck. This is the first time she's _ever_ heard anyone suggest they turfed Nick. She knows it happens, but...

"There was talk. Always is. Don't have to worry about me, though. I'm a keeper," Cam says.

#

"So the news from the Frozen North, ah, South, is good?" Cam asks, strolling into her lab.

It's bright and early on a crisp October morning, and he's got a cardboard tray with cups—tea, coffee—and a big white bag of pastries. He sets both down on her workbench, and Sam pounces on the bag.

"Bearclaws!" she says. She fishes one out, and turns to the tea. Earl Grey. "You'll make somebody a fine wife someday, Cam."

"I have plans," he says.

"Oh?" she's intrigued. She didn't know he was seeing anyone.

"Too soon to say. So?"

"Oh. Well. Yes. The _naquaadah_ generator is working, the containment chamber is stable." She sighs. "Doesn't solve the original problem."

"If you thaw him out, he dies."

"Yup." She takes a bite of pastry, washes it down with tea. "We need the Asgard, and we can't get in touch with them."

"What if you did get in touch with them, and they couldn't help?"

"Pretty damned unlikely. They did it once."

"Yeah, but ... Sam, I've read the mission file. Colonel O'Neill was _healing_ people. He didn't do that the first time."

Sam blows out a long breath of air. "No. He didn't. And yes, that implies there were probably ... major physical changes this time. And ... I don't know."

"So they're just going to..."

"Leave him on ice," Sam says, wincing at her own words. "Yes. It's unlikely our own science will ever be up to reversing the Ancient changes in his body and brain. It's possible the Pegasus Mission will find something, if they aren't all dead, and if we ever regain contact with them. If not, well, at some point he'll be declared dead. Legally, I mean."

"And they'll just keep him there."

Sam can't help thinking about waking up in, well, the future, something she knows more about than she likes (even though it's allegedly impossible to travel forward in time, and even though the one time she did—they did—she spent less than five minutes there). When Hathor captured them, she made them think they'd been in cryogenic suspension for 78 years. Each of them the sole survivor. She remembers her feeling of desolation. Exile. How long can—should—this frozen sleep be allowed to continue? Is there a point after which it would be kinder just to shut the chamber down, rather than to allow Colonel O'Neill to awaken into a future in which he'll be alone, isolated ... useless?

"The Asgard can't stay out of contact forever," she says.

"Hope not," Cam says. "Really looking forward to meeting those guys. But hey. I got something for you." He digs in his jacket pocket and pulls out a wad of bills. "Your cut of the winnings."

"What? Winnings?" Automatically she takes the money.

"Sam. It's been more than ninety days. I'm still here. That bet with Reynolds? I won. Got _great_ odds, too."

Sam stares down at the money in her hands. It's ... quite a lot. "And you're giving it to me?"

"Nah. That's just your cut. I figure we split it four ways. I've already paid off Teal'c."

Sam looks at the money again. "Um, Cam, you aren't planning to go to Dani and hand her five hundred dollars and tell her you bet with SG-3 we wouldn't kill you off? Because ... I'm not sure she'd take it all that well."

Dani will go ballistic.

Cam is shaking his head. "No, no, nothing like that. I figure I give it to you, and you can buy her something nice with it. Bottle of Scotch, say." He digs another wad of bills out of his pocket and lays them on the table.

"Cam, with that kind of money, I could buy her the _distillery._ "

"Well, good," he says. "See you later, then."

#

November, and they've had their new fourth for five months (Jack has been frozen for twenty months). And the Pentagon's stupid notions about Joint Command can go fuck themselves, because SG-1 has exactly one leader and that's Cameron Mitchell.

General Landry doesn't even bother telling them who's in charge on a particular mission any more. The truth (the truth they all knew from that first day in General Landry's office, the truth there was no point in telling) is that beyond the Gate scientific missions turn into military operations in a heartbeat and military operations live and die by how good your science is. You can't hand command around like a party hat and leave everybody not knowing who's supposed to tell them what to do.

She's not military, god knows. But she's spent ten years in a commando unit and watched other ones fall apart around her in every conceivable fashion. She understands _chain of command._

It keeps you alive.

Cam is keeping them alive.

Dani doesn't know how she feels about that.

She hits him with her quarterstaff, and he laughs. (He hits her back, too. He's getting better).

He tells her to "get your goddamned ass back to the Gate, Dani, _move,_ " and she goes.

She says, "I need five more minutes here," and it's a half hour later, and there isn't any yelling or pouting or long-suffering looks.

He holds Sammy's tools for her while she's taking apart a balky hyperdrive, peering over her shoulder into its insides as if it's the _best television show ever._ He doesn't tell her to hurry, and he doesn't say "Carter, _now_ would be a good time," and he doesn't pick up things and fiddle with them just as Sammy's about to reach for them.

Teal'c likes him. Cam's really hopeless at _kel'no'reem,_ but he keeps trying. She's sat with the two of them once or twice. He brings Teal'c presents. Hats, mostly. He doesn't think it's fair Teal'c has to live on-Base, but, well, they all know Teal'c's lucky he isn't parts in a glass jar somewhere. Cam keeps talking to General Landry about it. She knows that, even though he hasn't said anything. She wants to tell him there's _no point_ —even though General Hammond is in Washington, he's not alone there, and Washington (most of them, the rest of them) still thinks of Teal'c as an Enemy Alien. Even Nyan is allowed to live off-Base. Cassie, of course. Not Teal'c.

But.

There's chocolate on her desk sometimes in the morning. Not just any old thing. The good stuff. Godiva. Nothing girly, not like a _box of chocolates._ Bars. Not too many at a time. Just a couple. And chocolate-covered espresso beans, once.

She's bought a couple of big travel mugs, because she makes espresso at home in the mornings now, when she has time.

But.

And he comes into her office one day with something under his arm and says he found it in the back of a bookstore this weekend and thought she might like it, and she thanks him (because that's what you do) and he sets it down and is gone before she gets a look at it, which is good because she's expecting some battered copy of the Dover edition of Budge (red cover, she saw that much, probably _The Book of the Dead,_ oh, well, she can use it for kindling), but what it turns out to be is that new book on Cognitive Linguistics she'd been meaning to pick up. And it would be stupid to thank him twice, so she doesn't.

But.

Nothing to say, nothing to do, she doesn't want to analyze it, _hates_ the conclusion that analyzing things will lead to.

But.

She has no gods. But if she did, she would worship Ma'at. And the truth is...

People don't walk the halls on eggshells any more. The basketball league is a great success (Cam even has a hoop in his office. He shoots baskets from his desk). Sammy and Teal'c both play. Teal'c was a surprise.

Cam organized a picnic—a big one—for Labor Day. Wives (and husbands) and kids and volleyball. Barbeque, and he borrowed her truck, and there was Last Chance watermelon (marked with paint) and the other kind, and he made ten gallons of potato salad (Sammy helped) because with everything there were two hundred people there, and even Josie and Kayla and Tessa came. And General Landry and Teal'c showed up wearing matching Hawaiian shirts, and General Landry looked disgruntled and Teal'c looked blandly amused and Cam looked so innocent she was sure he was behind it. Somehow.

He's good for the SGC.

SG-1 is the Flagship Team. It's actually their code-name, if somebody has to talk about them and doesn't want to use their designation. _Flagship._ (Not much of a damned code-name, but that's the military for you). She's had it dinned into her ears by three different Generals—even Bauer, while he was kicking her off the Team and breaking them up—that SG-1 sets the tone for the SGC.

_"When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy."_ She's sure that's how Cam would put it if he bothered to talk about it.

And—with Nick, with Hailey—they weren't working, and everyone knew it, including them. And it didn't matter what twenty-four other Teams did-or-didn't do. SG-1 set the tone, and the tone was ... floundering.

Now they aren't.

But.

Oh, god, she doesn't have to _like_ it, does she?

Because.

#


	2. NOVEMBER 2005—JANUARY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 goes off the grid, Cam cooks Thanksgiving dinner, Dani has the worst bar-pickup ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter-specific warnings.

Cam's talking about Thanksgiving, talking wistfully about going home (that's North Carolina) for the holiday, but that would require at least two, better three, days' leave over a holiday, and if he'd like to be home with his (largely-mythical, Dani is almost sure) relatives for Thanksgiving, he'd _really_ like to go home for Christmas. Nobody gets both, if they get either. And practically the only time SG-1 gets stood down is when they've been injured or otherwise compromised. It's not a basis for making travel plans.

"I'm sure General Landry will do what he can," Sammy says.

"Hope so," Cam says. "Haven't been home for Christmas in three years."

Last year he was still in the hospital. The year before he was on-station with his squadron.

"But hey," he says. "If I'm going to be in the Springs for Thanksgiving, that means I'm gonna be cooking."

Dani doesn't say anything. Half the time they were offworld for Thanksgiving. The other half (after the first few years) they were General Hammond's guests. Last year, Jack gone and Janet dead, the four of them, her and Teal'c and Sammy and Cassie, went out to a restaurant. Cassie complained all through the meal about everything, and yes, she'd really been complaining about the fact that _Janet wasn't there._ The meal had still sucked. 

"You goin" home?" Cam asks, lounging in her doorway.

The military, she thinks with vague irritation, should _stand up straight_. Cam doesn't seem to feel it necessary, except, sometimes, when General Landry gets _that tone_ in his voice (the one that always makes her want to slouch) and Sammy twitches and Teal'c frowns and all of a sudden Cam is about two inches taller and you could iron clothes on him (except when it goes the other way and he just looks so _amiable_ she wonders if he's suddenly gone simple-minded, and suddenly General Landry forgets what he was so mad about). Like now. Leaning against her door again, and she vows that this time—if he calls her "baby"—it _will_ be the time where she explains to him, once and for all, that he is not to do that. Ever.

He doesn't call _Sammy_ "baby." Of course, he calls her "babe," and the first time she heard him do that, she was sure Sammy would slap him down. But Sammy didn't.

"I'm going to a bar," she says. A moment later she realizes what she's said, and recoils (internally) in horror. But he can't possibly know what she means.

He smiles. "Oh, cool. Bet you know some good ones. Can I come too?"

She wants to tell him "no," and why she's actually going, and ask him why he doesn't get his own damned life, and tell him she's changed her mind, and he's just looking at her, waiting for her answer, and she really can't say any of those things. So she sighs. "Sure."

#

She doesn't actually know any bars of the sort she thinks he's thinking of, so she takes him to O'Malley's. "We got thrown out of here once," she says. "I'm pretty sure they don't remember that any more."

"With the...?"

"Armbands."

"Right."

And they go inside, and nobody seems to remember her, and of course he's never been, and they start with dinner (the steaks are damned good here and she's missed them) and talk about—of all things—the weather. Because it's October, which means they've already had a couple of light dustings of snow, though nothing to speak of. Didn't even stick.

Cam's _visited_ snow. But he's never lived with it.

"Well for god's sake get snow tires. If I have to come and winch your ass out of a drift more than once, you aren't going to like it."

Cam accepts this threat with good grace. "What about when the weather's really bad?"

"Depends on your definition. Some times we just stay on-Base. The... my house is close, half an hour off. If the weather's only half-bad, we stay there. The road between there and the Base is always plowed. You'd be able to make it in from there no matter what the conditions were, but in a blizzard, even in the truck, it could take you up to an hour."

"I'll have to rely on you guys for a heads-up on the weather."

"From here on it pretty much sucks until March. But we don't get as much snow as a lot of places in this area. That's one of the reasons NORAD's here." Something he undoubtedly already knows.

After they eat, they take their next round of beers and shoot some pool. He's not as good as Sammy, and over the course of the night she actually manages to win one of the three games (the second one; she's out of practice). If she'd won more than that, she'd be sure he was cheating-to-lose, but he doesn't.

"I never win against Sammy," she says, pleased.

"Oh, baby, neither do I," he groans, laughing. "The woman is a _shark!_ Smiles at you and takes your money."

"Take yours?" she asks, though she doesn't actually want to know. She's been resisting knowing about Cam for months now. It's become habit.

"All the damned time. Until I got smart enough not to bet against her. Still fun to play, though."

It's interesting going out with Cam (in the sense they're _out,_ not that this is by any stretch of the imagination, a _date_ ). Not because she wants to be there, but because he turns out to be entertaining to watch for a heretofore-unsuspected reason. When they were sitting at the table it was one thing. But when they're over shooting pool, well, it's a public space where people mingle. And people certainly are.

Female people. Hitting on him.

It's true he's the center of female attention on-Base. After four months, she's used to that. She's not _blind_. Cameron Mitchell is a pretty boy. And he flirts with _everyone,_ from airmen to Colonels to civilian consultants, in a sort of equal-opportunity good-to-see-you this-means-nothing way. He even flirts with _Amelia,_ and Amelia's got grand-nieces. But it's all sort of _military_ flirting.

Not here.

Here, everybody thinks he's, well, _fair game._

Their eyes just slide right over her, of course. She's dressed for work, not to go out. One of the women even suggests (Dani's breaking the table, close enough to hear) he ditch his brother and go off with her.

"Now, honey, I can't do a thing like that," Cam says. "My Momma's awfully strict with me, and I promised her I'd bring Dani home with me."

"You're a terrible person," she tells him, when the woman leaves.

"I didn't tell a single lie," he says innocently. "Momma _is_ powerful strict. And she raised me right."

"Hah," she says, and goes to line up her next shot.

But women keep coming around, flirting with him, asking him his name, where he's from, what does he do? And Cam smiles back, and tells them things that are almost entirely true. It's fun to watch, and by the way he grins at her, he knows she knows it.

She watches him line up a shot, all concentration, though she bets he isn't going to make it, and watches the women watch him. She's got a dress pretty much like that red one in her closet at home, and wonders what he'd think, what he'd say, if he saw her in it.

What the hell is she _thinking?_

He blows the shot, but it doesn't matter. She loses the game pretty thoroughly. When he's cleared the table, he takes her cue. "Guess it's pretty much time to call it a night. Two days off, but I'm guessing you're gonna want to go into work tomorrow." 

"And you're probably going to want to cook something."

"Aw, no, nothing like that. You got me all wrong. It's _football season_. Teal'c's coming over. We're gonna watch the game."

"Cam, I hate to break it to you, but after seven years Teal'c never really figured out hockey."

Cam looks baffled for a moment, then he smiles radiantly. "Sure, sure. But this is _football._ "

"Uh-huh. Good luck."

#

No leave for Cam at Thanksgiving. They have a mission on the 22nd (Tuesday) and things kind of slow down at Thanksgiving (most of the civilian staff takes leave) but SG-1's on-call through next Monday. That means not going anywhere just in case. It doesn't mean Cam doesn't intend to cook. The menu has become his main topic of conversation.

For reasons Dani's not quite sure of she doesn't want to spend Thanksgiving with Cam. Even though she's spent most of the month working out the best method of avoidance, none of them is really that good. She's just about at the point of deciding she's going to have to tell Sammy that she _just wants to be alone,_ and she knows how well that will work.

Maybe she'll think of something while they're on 452.

The idea that the _Goa'uld_ would ever use bounty hunters (Aris Boch) has always struck her as bizarre; just the idea of the _Goa'uld hiring_ someone instead of terrorizing them (or trying to) into submission. But they've only visited a tiny fraction of the worlds that are out there. Apparently there are not only bounty hunters around the edges of the _Goa'uld_ Empire, but a vast network of smugglers. ("Like _Star Wars,_ " Cam says happily.)

Teal'c knows nothing about them. Such smugglers would hardly have impinged upon the domains of Apophis or his particular enemies, and contrary to the opinion of the IOA, Teal'c is not some kind of walking Wikipedia of " _Goa'uld_ I Have Known And Despised". There are a lot of things Teal'c doesn't know about, including the Space Mafia. Who are apparently becoming bolder lately, and while they haven't heard as much from the _Tok'ra_ as they'd like to (the _Tok'ra_ only remember the _Tok'ra_ / _Tau'ri_ Treaty when it suits them) the _Tok'ra_ are passing them a bit of information now and then (the _Tok'ra_ are using them as canon-fodder, that's nothing new). The _Tok'ra_ say the Lucian Alliance (Space Mafia) are expanding their territory into that formerly held by the _Goa'uld_.

(She wonders what Ba'al is doing these days. Ba'al grabbed Anubis's territory after Antarctica.)

General Landry wants SG-1 to see what they can do about contacting this ... Lucian Alliance. Apparently they have a base on P6G-452. The SGC has ( _Tok'ra_ ) intelligence that P6G-452 is a pastoral farming world (as if the _Goa'uld_ had raided Kansas for settlers).

They go, and make their overture, and as a result spend Tuesday night in the dungeon of someone named Worrel. He knows entirely too much about them, wants to know where Colonel O'Neill is (Cam says he's the relief pitcher and then starts into a long complicated explanation of something he calls the Three Ball Rule, but Worrel is really unimpressed; there's hitting), and says at least the rest of them are worth something.

"So, no alliance then?" Cam says, as they're dragged out.

Worrel doesn't bother to answer that one.

Their packs and vests and weapons are gone, but Worrel didn't bother to be really thorough; they've still got their GDOs. Sammy dabs at Cam's face with a wad of Kleenex. His lip is bleeding.

"Ow, ow, ow. Easy there," he says.

"Cam," she says. "The Three Ball Rule?"

"Now, you see, nobody really understands that, Sam. I figured he'd be glad to have me explain it to him."

Dani investigates the dungeon, bends over to sniff at the water in the bucket, regards the single bunk bed suspiciously, and opts for sitting on the floor. "I don't think that water's drinkable. Wonder if they're planning to feed us?"

"That's about all I can do," Sammy says, stuffing the wad of bloody Kleenex into a pocket.

"Might be a good way out if they do," Cam says, answering her and not Sammy. "They'd have to open the door. What about that lock?"

Sammy goes over and looks at it. Not much to see from this side, but she can easily get her hand through the bars. "Maybe," she says, feeling around. "Pretty low-tech for a bunch of space-smugglers. And I don't like the fact they aren't guarding us."

"Well, maybe they figure we've been cowed into submission," Cam says cheerfully. "Better leave that for now. It's still light out." He sits down on the floor and pats himself all over, producing a deck of cards. "Poker?"

After an hour or so—still no guards in sight—Dani digs out a couple of candy bars and they share them around. While it's still light enough to see, Cam has them all do a quiet inventory of what they still have. Aside from the (now gone) candy, Dani has a notebook and pen, antihistamines, four paperclips, Kleenex, and three feet of high-test fishing line.

Sam has a Swiss Army Knife, T3s, assorted hex wrenches, half a pack of Peanut M&Ms, a cigarette lighter, and her earrings. 

Teal'c has popcorn-flavored jellybeans, a bandana, camo cream, about two dollars in change (none of it American money) an enormous rubber band, and a signal mirror. He also has a knife in his boot that Worrel didn't find.

Cam has the cards, a couple of packets of those coffee teabags, sunblock, camo cream, a couple of quarters ("You throw them on the floor," he says when Dani looks at him, which doesn't clear things up at all), two packs of chewing gum (one Juicy Fruit, one Doublemint), and a couple of extra bullets for the Beretta he no longer has.

"Hey, I guess we ought to be able to build something with all this," he says.

Not that they really need to. They play cards until it's too dark to see—she loses every hand early; not the point—then they wait another hour or so, then Sammy picks the lock with one of the attachments on her knife, greasing both lock and blade thoroughly with camo cream. 

Cam asks Sammy for her hex wrenches, and Dani for the fishing line. He's making something while Sammy works—Teal'c holds the cigarette lighter—but Dani can't see what it is.

On their way out, she finds out.

Garrote.

Because they don't quite get out of the building undetected, and Teal'c's rubber-band-and-change makes a fine sling-shot, but there are two guards and Cam's behind the other one and he's clawing at his throat.

The blood trickles, then gushes—black in the moonlight of the courtyard—but he's down without a sound, they both are, and now Cam and Teal'c have the unfamiliar boxy-looking toy-colored weapons they were carrying and all four of them are out the gate and running toward the Stargate.

They're about two miles away from Worral's place when Cam looks back and says: "Step on it, people."

And she looks over her shoulder and the house is lit up.

And then they're back at the Gate, and Cam is yelling at her to dial, and he and Teal'c are shooting back the way they came, discouraging their pursuers, and she can hear the Lucians getting closer anyway, and there's a flash, and _the Stargate isn't there any more._

"We've got a problem!" she yells.

Cam's head whips around, and so he's just in time to help her watch the DHD vanish too.

So much for Thanksgiving.

#

Worrel wants his Stargate back.

He's decided—god knows why—that they've stolen it.

"Why the _fuck_ do you think we'd steal it before we could escape through it?" she snaps.

She's bruised. No glasses. It's about five miles from the Stargate (where it used to be, anyway) back to Worrel's house and he caught up to them there, stripped them to their t-shirts, and threw their watches and GDOs and their dog-and-ID-tags into the trees before he tied them all up and pretty much dragged them back here (all of which argues for him being really overwrought and not all that clever). She's sure she hit every rock and root along the way. The others aren't in much better shape.

"I don't know, Dr. Jackson," Worrel says. "But believe me, I intend to find out."

"Well, hey," Cam says easily. "I guess if you've got questions you ought to start with me. But I'm tellin' you right now, we really don't know a thing about it."

Two of Worrel's goons hold Cam up while a third one beats him. It's never easy to watch a teammate getting hurt (deliberately), but the rest of them are tied to the bench in the middle of the courtyard, and there are guns everywhere. Nothing they can do.

Cam keeps saying they came here to help.

"Can't you see he's telling the truth?" Sammy demands angrily.

Finally Worrel snaps his fingers. The holding-goons let go. Cam drops to his knees. "Had... worse... days... playing... football," he gasps. He falls to his side, unable to catch himself. His hands are tied behind him.

"You are really the dumbest thug we've ever met," Dani says coldly. "He's telling the truth. We came here to offer you an alliance against the _Goa'uld_. You refused because you don't think we're powerful enough. Now you suddenly think we can go around stealing Stargates? That's—"

"Take her next," Worrel says.

Cam is trying to get to his feet.

"Hitting any of us is not going to change the facts!" she shouts, as they drag her into the middle of the courtyard.

"Maybe I enjoy it," Worrel says. "I will go down in history as the man who captured and defeated the great SG-1."

"You will go down in history as a moron without a Stargate," Dani says. "And you aren't going to get it back unless—"

He hits her. Himself. Backhand. He hits like a girl. "You were saying, Dr. Jackson?"

She spits blood. She'd kick him, but he's got a gun to Sammy's head. "Unless you let us help you figure out who took it!"

"Why would I do that?" he asks, and punches her in the stomach.

It takes her almost a minute to draw breath for reply. "Because ... you want your Stargate … back..."

He hits her again. Stomach again. Just as well she didn't get any dinner.

"I'll find a way."

"Better ... not hit ... Sammy ... then. She's ... the … smart one."

Her beating isn't as bad as Cam's. When it's over, they tie her to the bench again beside Cam. Her mouth is bleeding, and the inside of her cheek is cut—almost inevitable when you're slapped that hard. Her ribs are sore, but she's pretty sure none of them are broken. Head hurts, neck hurts, oh, just about everything hurts. But she's had worse. Right now they've got other problems.

No rescue is coming. It would have to have come through the Gate. So even if they get away from Worrel again, where are they going to escape _to?_

By now, Worrel's just entertaining himself, or taking revenge for the people they killed in their first escape. He knows they won't talk. Or not yet. Or not with what he has on hand. They bring in a whipping triangle and set it up, and Teal'c lets Worral's goons tie him to it because the three of them have guns pointing at their heads. The flogging is brutal, but Teal'c manages to just look pissed the entire time. 

He's even still standing under his own power when it's over.

#

"I'll give you some time to reconsider your position," Worrel says.

They throw Cam into the cell—same one they were in before. She sort of falls to her knees a few steps in. Teal'c and Sammy walk in under their own power. Teal'c's the only one with his hands free. He unties the rest of them.

Sammy hasn't been tortured. Just as well.

There's a guard on them this time.

It's Wednesday morning.

"We need clean water," Dani says to the guard. "If Worrel wants to either talk to us or trade us, we need to be alive."

He ignores her, ostentatiously turning his back. Well, she had to ask.

Teal'c isn't bleeding too badly, but his back is black (black-black) and red. He settles into a cross-legged position on the floor and closes his eyes. If they aren't out of here within another twenty-four hours, Teal'c is going to start the long slow process of dying. His tretonin's gone, and while he can actually go quite a long time between doses if he has to (though it's nobody's idea of fun) they're _trapped on this planet_.

Cam lies with his head in Sammy's lap, bleeding slowly and steadily onto her trousers. Between the dragging and the beating, his shirt is in shreds, but he's conscious.

"Back here again, huh?" he asks. "Dani, you all right?"

"Fine," she says, crawling over to sit next to them. _Ginger-peachy, and Cam, what the hell do we do now?_

"So," he says. It's obviously an effort for him to talk and she wishes he'd shut the hell up. "What you figure really happened to the Stargate?"

She glances up at the guard, then back at Cam, puzzled. Does he actually want her to answer honestly? The guard will hear every word.

He winks at her—one good eye left—and cocks a thumb.

"Well," she begins slowly, still not sure where he's going with this, "as you know, our intelligence reports indicated the Lucian Alliance was a group that had operated for years on the fringes of the _Goa'uld_ Empire, possibly even occasionally being employed by various minor _Goa'uld_. With the death of Anubis following his attempt to gain political control of the _Goa'uld,_ the current political situation is in flux. Inevitably, the Alliance has taken advantage of these conditions to extend their territory and influence, which is how they came to our attention. Certainly, if _we_ can find them, others must be able to as well."

Cam nods as well as he can. She's doing fine.

"Now, the disappearance of the Stargate is puzzling. We'll table the question of "why"—for the moment—and look at "how." As we both saw, it vanished in a flash of light, which would be, well, at least similar to Asgard Beaming Technology." Her lip is bleeding again, and she wipes her face with the back of her hand.

"A form of beam technology, if what you're saying is true, would really have to be it," Sammy says. "Transport rings wouldn't work. We've never seen those vary in size, and they aren't large enough to move a Stargate. Besides, their physical manifestation is entirely different. You'd recognize them if you saw them."

"Sammy, I've been using transport rings for eleven years. I know them when I see them."

"Okay. So ... not transport rings."

"I said that." She glances down at Cam. Still fine. "But it's unlikely the Asgard removed the Lucian Stargate. They've never done something like that before on any world. And we know _we_ didn't do it. We don't have access to Asgard Beam Technology. So who does that leave?"

Still fine.

"Let's detour for a moment to the question of "why" the Lucian Gate would have been removed. Obviously the locals depend upon it extensively, otherwise Worrel wouldn't have been so, well, _upset_ when it vanished."

"So probably, if there's trouble, the Stargate is their main method of getting out of here," Sammy says. "It makes sense. It's fast. It's undetectable—and once the Event Horizon collapses, it's untraceable. You could move hundreds of people through it in less than an hour. So. Isn't it obvious? I mean, it worked on us, didn't it? Whoever removed 452's Stargate wants to trap the population here. Or at least as much of it as they can."

Cam smiles—as well as _he_ can—and squeezes Sammy's hand. Dani realizes that this is where he's going with this.

"Okay," Dani says. Oh, god, she has the world's worst headache. "That's "how" and "why." Next is "who." _Who_ has this technology and wants to trap Worrel and his people here? Well, without knowing exactly who his enemies are, it's hard to say."

She _can_ say, though. Anubis had the Asgard Beaming Technology, and at least part of his fleet became Ba'al's spoils of war. Worrel had mentioned selling them for the bounty. Anubis may be dead, but Ba'al probably isn't, and if Worrel contacted any of the _Goa'uld_ …. Why isn't the planet crawling with Jaffa right this minute?

A _Goa'uld_ ship _has_ to have stolen the Gate. One of Anubis's. Which Ba'al now has.

Cam circles a finger. _Go on._

But lie by misdirection.

"All I can say, though, is if _I_ were Worrel, I'd already be packing to get the hell out of here. In fact," she says, as if suddenly struck by a thought, "he probably is. I wonder who's going to make the cut to go with him since he can't take everyone? I mean, if he takes us along to sell us off, that's four less places just to begin with."

"He's probably already left," Sammy says brightly. "Who knows when that attack fleet is going to get here? Could be only a matter of hours."

A few minutes later, the guard leaves.

"There is no honor among thieves," Cam says, struggling upright with a groan.

"Indeed there is not, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says without opening his eyes. "Undoubtedly the guard already goes to remonstrate with the unfortunate Worrel, or to rouse his confederates to action."

Worrel's going to be a lot more unfortunate if Teal'c ever gets his hands on him.

"Come on," Cam says. "We gotta get outta here."

Sammy props him up against the wall.

"Cam," Dani says. "You can't even walk."

"Oh," he says. "I'll run when the time comes. How 'bout you?"

She will if she has to. "Where?"

"They're smugglers," he says patiently. "They gotta have ships. All we gotta do is find out where they keep one, steal it, fly it to some planet that's still got a Stargate, and ... we're home free."

Right. "Getting out of here _how?_ " Just to begin with.

"Well, my Momma always told me it was good manners to leave a hostess gift when you stayed somewhere for a while. Sam, you want to check under the mattress?"

Sammy does. Several large roaches scurry out when she lifts it, but Sammy's smallest hex wrench is there. By the time she's picked the lock (again; second time's easier and there's light this time) they can hear gunfire. The Lucian weapons use slugs, like Earth guns. They're loud. 

"Looks like they started the party without us," Cam says.

He's limping painfully, and gasping with every step, but Dani doesn't doubt he'll run when he has to. They all will, but where the hell are they running to? She hasn't seen any sign of any spaceships.

They sneak through the house, dodging and hiding. Just as Cam had hoped, there's something of a mutiny going on: Worrel's apparently already had to shoot a couple of his lieutenants, and that hasn't gone down well. From what they overhear, the story Cam got her and Sammy to tell is gaining currency: half of Worrel's people are sure there's an attack fleet on the way that will arrive at any moment.

They find what looks like a store room (store rooms look alike the Galaxy over).

"Local clothes if you can find 'em," Cam says. He leans against the door while they riffle chests.

There's a whole rack of bottles. Dani takes one down. It's sealed with wax. She opens it. Wine. She goes over to Cam.

"Shirt," she says, but he can't lift his arms, so she peels off hers and soaks down the t-shirt. "Your face," she says, because he's covered in blood, and that's kind of ... noticeable.

He takes this shirt, and dabs it against her face before she can move away. "You know," he says, "I really prefer a nice Chianti for this. And maybe some fava beans."

It's probably a joke, but she doesn't get it. She smiles anyway, even though it hurts. "Clean up," she says, and goes to rummage.

"I don't know how local this is," Sammy says. "But it looks like it will fit."

Dani's digging through a chest that holds boots, nothing but boots. They're all knee-high and black, and she finds her size and Sammy's and Teal'c's with long practice. She looks at Cam.

"I take a Size Twelve," he says.

She pulls out a pair of Close Enough.

Sammy's peeling down to skin, and pulling on a pair of black leather pants and a woven leather t-shirt. It's a little too tight, and when she pulls it on, the mesh stretches and you can see skin (it's why she took off everything, Dani realizes). She takes her set of boots, and it's Dani's turn at the chest. Sammy has already pulled out things she think will fit. Dani strips without hesitation, struggling into the pants first—("They're too tight!" she says. "No they're not!" Sammy shoots back)—and then the t-shirt. It fits closer than her skin.

Another chest holds men's clothes. Dani guards the door while Sammy and Cam rummage through that one. Matching black leather pants for Cam and Teal'c—and hardly fair that Cam, apparently, gets a wrap-vest in some kind of pale leather instead of having to make a visit to Planet of the Woven T-Shirts.

They need to do something about Teal'c—Dani's sure he can't wear a vest, not with his back the way it is—but he simply shrugs one into place and glares.

God help Worrel if they catch him.

They stuff their discarded clothes and their boots into the bottom of one of the chests, and Teal'c tears up another one of the vests to make a kind of bandana (she thinks of Worrel again when he does, and from the expression on Teal'c's face, so is he) to cover his tattoo, and make a last check of the room for weapons (everything else is in here but those) and Sammy eases the door open, and out they go.

They're armed pretty quickly after that, because everyone in Worrel's house is, so it's easy to get their hands on guns. And a few minutes after _that,_ somebody notices they're missing—again—and Worrel's ordering people to go look for them, but this time, half the people think it's a diversionary measure so Worrel can take them and get out of here (they've got a good view of that particular argument, because they're hiding in a room just off Worrel's study, eavesdropping). And Worrel shoots the person who says it loudest, and most of the others go off to obey him, but a couple of the ones in the back have "time to desert the sinking ship" body-language, and she tells Cam so. They follow their own search-party out of the house, and when the two she's earmarked hang back and then veer off, they follow them.

They have to do some shooting —the people they're following (when they notice) don't really want to be followed. But the clothes were a good idea; they obviously think they're being followed by more of Worrel's people. The other three shoot wide, and she doesn't shoot at all because without her glasses she might accidentally hit them and they really need to see where they're going.

Nobody else is following them at the moment, though. A damned good thing, too. The lack of food isn't so bad, but it's been almost a day without water, now. Cam and Teal'c are really hurt, and she's pretty bruised. 

Finally Teal'c drops both of the guys they're chasing, and she figures they don't need them any more.

There's actually an airfield, if you can call it that when it's spaceships. The airfield has guards. Or, at least, it's full of people. One of the ships is huge, and probably has people already on board. A bunch of the designs Teal'c doesn't recognize at all. Several of the others are Death Gliders—two-seaters, and three of them can fly those, but they don't have the range they need. As they watch, one of the _al'kesh_ takes off. _Goa'uld_ mid-range bomber with hyperdrive capability. Two-seat, they could fit the four of them in it in a pinch, but there are about a dozen people already at the field—in addition to the guards—and more are going to be arriving any minute. They need to get out of here _now_. And the _al'kesh_ are the most popular ships. Everybody's going for those. Probably because of the weapons.

"That one," Cam says. He points.

Off in the distance. Gold blur. Nothing around it is moving.

They head that way at a jog. Her ribs are on fire and the bruising makes it hurt to breathe.

#

_Tel'tak_. _Goa'uld_ cargo ship. It's got hyperdrive, and it's even got a bathroom, which actually means water if the tanks are full. And Teal'c can fly it.

They stagger on board.

"Thank god for this," Sammy mutters.

Teal'c strips off his vest and drops it to the floor. It was starting to soak through.

"Count 'em later," Cam says. "Lets get out of here."

They head up to the control room. Teal'c drops into the pilot's chair and starts poking things. Half the lights don't come on at all.

"I do not believe this vehicle to be in optimal condition, Colonel Mitchell," he says dubiously.

Out the window, they can see a large body of armed men (menacing blurs) approaching the airfield. Including (she's almost sure) Worrel.

"Is it gonna fly? Or just explode?" Cam asks. He's in the second seat.

"I believe it will fly. But we have no cloak, no weapons, no communications, no—"

"Teal'c. Just ... go."

The _tel'tak_ rises into the air just as Worrel's men begin shooting.

"—shields," Teal'c finishes, as a bullet pings off the hull.

#

The jump to hyperspace is a spectacular failure.

It's a success in terms of the fact they make it without exploding—so they're safe from both Worrel and whatever _Goa'uld_ he contacted (if he did)—and a failure in terms of the fact it's only about eight minutes long. Just about enough time to take them to the middle of nowhere.

"Yeah, okay, great," Sammy says in disgust as they pop out again. She heads for the engine room.

"I'll go check the supplies," Dani says.

There aren't any. But there's water. There's nothing to transport it in—no supplies on board at all—so she drinks and goes to tell the others. Teal'c has already shut everything down, so if anybody does happen to be out here looking for them, they won't find them by tracing their energy output.

Sammy comes back up from the engine room (more of a cubbyhole on a _tel'tak_ ). "Everything's overheated," she says. "It's going to be at least two hours before it cools down enough for me to work on it."

"There's water," Dani says. "No cups, though." She starts to rake her wet hair out of her face and winces. Adrenaline high is wearing off and everything hurts.

"How much?" Sammy asks.

"More than we'll ever need. Tanks are full." And even _tel'taks_ recycle.

"Finally. Some good news," Sammy mutters. "Come on, Cam. I'll buy you a drink."

And they go off and come back and now Cam's wearing _wet_ leather and looking damned cheerful about it, and Teal'c heaves up out of the driver's seat, and she gets up and follows and picks up his vest on the way and after he's drunk his fill Dani folds up the vest and soaks it through—some kind of soft leather, kind of like chamois—and blots his back gently while he sits.

"We'll be home soon," she says hopefully.

"I have every confidence in Colonel Carter's skill," Teal'c says.

They go back up to the _pel'tak._ Cam and Sammy are sitting on the floor, side by side, with their backs against the bulkhead. She slides down the bulkhead on the other side of the cabin. Teal'c, for obvious reasons, sits down in the middle of the floor.

"I can't believe we managed to steal what was probably the one ship on the entire planet that _didn't work_ ," Sammy says bitterly.

"I cannot believe they didn't leave any _things_ on board," Dani snarls. Because even if there weren't any food, it would have been nice if there were other things. Like blankets. Or cups. Or first-aid kits.

"I can't _wait_ to see what I find when I finally get in there," Sammy says. "I just hope there are actually backups for whatever's been slagged—and you just _know_ half that stuff's been fried. Of _course_ it was easy to steal. It was down for repairs."

They move on from there to other topics of complaint. By now they're a day overdue. General Landry will have tried to reach them—and not have gotten a lock, of course, because the Gate isn't there. Another twenty-four hours (and it's a good bet they'll still be here, probably _right_ here) and he'll declare them MIA. Cassie will be informed. She's already worrying.

And finally Cam says: "Look."

All of them—even Teal'c—look at him. He points out the windows.

_"Look."_

They look out the windows. With almost all of the cabin lights out, you can see what's beyond clearly.

Stars.

"Hell of a view," Cam says quietly.

And it is. Out here, in deep space, the stars don't twinkle. They _shine_. And they aren't all just blue and white and pale red like the stars of Earth. Out here they come in every color there is. Arcs and balls and clusters of them against the absolute blackness of space. It's been years since she's really looked at them. Been years since it was all new.

"Yeah," Sammy says, after a moment. "It's a hell of a view."

"Well," Cam says, "Thanksgiving might be tomorrow, but I guess right now is as good a time as any to count our blessings, wouldn't you say?"

"I am thankful we are all alive, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says, after a moment.

"Yeah, me, too," Cam says. "I'm thankful I got to see this. It's real pretty."

_I'm thankful we're going to be here for Thanksgiving_. Nope. She thinks about it. "'Alive" kind of covers it," she says.

"'Dear Lord, for the fact that the hyperdrive did not explode, we are well and truly grateful,'" Sammy intones. "And for the fact that Worrel did not decide he wanted to marry Dani."

"Sammy!" she yelps.

"Oh, come on, Dani, you know he's just your type."

"Deranged alien warlord," Cam says, nodding. "Got it."

"Oh my god. _So_ not fair!" Dani protests.

"Accurate, though," Sammy says remorselessly.

Even Teal'c looks amused.

#

Sammy fixes the engines (six hours) and then finds out she's going to have to baby-sit them through two-minute hops to get anywhere, and Cam says they'd all better get some rest first because it's been a long day. And Sammy wants to argue, and Cam pulls, well, Dani guesses you can't exactly call it rank. And Sammy gives in, the way she always does these days. And they all settle down in a sort-of pile (except Teal'c, who _does_ need to sleep, but has apparently decided to do it sitting up tonight) with Sammy in the middle because if they turn the cabin temperature up too high something might blow up, they might drain the back-up batteries, or they might actually warm the _tel'tak_ to the point where it becomes visible to somebody's sensors.

In the morning (whatever passes for morning) Dani's hungry and light-headed and the headache _will not stop_. Lack of coffee as much as anything, really; she misses coffee and her toothbrush and warm clothes. And a night sleeping on the bare floor of the _tel'tak_ has allowed everything to stiffen up nicely. Sammy's the only one who's one-hundred-percent mobile. Cam is on his feet, stretching and groaning, working out as much of the stiffness as he can.

Teal'c looks a little better today. Jaffa are tough. And they heal fast, even with tretonin instead of symbiotes.

Though he's now two days late for his injection.

"Good morning, Sunshine!" Cam says, when she opens her eyes.

She groans, and staggers (barefoot) off to the bathroom. Water, even ice-cold water, is no substitute for coffee. She peels up the leather t-shirt and checks her bruising. Not only has it turned black and green, it's covered with a symmetrical pattern of tiny red lines where the flesh has swollen into the leather mesh. She sighs and pulls the shirt back down again. This is one alien costume she isn't going to ask to keep.

They spend Thanksgiving Day limping toward the nearest planet with a Stargate. At least the navigational systems are working, and so is the life-support. Two more things to be thankful for. Cam's turned it into a game: finding things to be thankful for.

"I'm thankful you're going to have to be the one to explain to General Landry why we're coming back dressed like this," Dani mutters.

"You're going to have to help me come up with a really good story," Cam says.

Beaten, semi-starving, quasi-marooned. Still cheerful.

#

They ring down to the Stargate because Teal'c doesn't really trust the _tel'tak's_ landing capabilities. From there, because of the lack of GDOs, they go to Chulak.

It's a six-klik hike to the city (and, oh, god, it's _never_ warm on Chulak), but at the end of it there's tretonin for Teal'c and there's food. Medical attention will still have to wait. The Jaffa are only a few years away from being completely symbiote-dependent, and most of the people here still carry them. They have no medical technology.

Another thing they don't have is coffee.

"Hey," Cam says, digging into a bowl of stew. "This is good. What is this?"

"I'll tell you later," Dani says. It's hot, but most of it isn't cooked. They don't go in a lot for cooking on Chulak, really. Teal'c loves sushi.

Afterward Master Bra'tac conducts them back to the Gate, bringing his GDO so they can send their IDC and—finally—get home.

#

When they walk through into the Gateroom—battered, shivering, and looking like a collection of disreputable _space pirates_ (as it suddenly occurs to her, after she gets a good look at the appalled-to-amused expressions on the faces of the Armed Response Team) General Landry is there to meet them.

"Welcome home, SG-1. You want to tell me what you're doing dressed like that?"

"Well, sir, we had a bit of a wardrobe malfunction," Cam says. "This was the best we could do on short notice."

General Landry is trying to have several different expressions on his face at once, from relief to displeasure to "for god's sake get those clothes off at once." He settles for ordering them to the Infirmary immediately, where they discover it's two am Friday morning. 

Sammy calls Cassie immediately from a land-line, while the graveyard on-call (Dr. Hooker) gets the rest of them into scrubs and gets an abbreviated report of how they were injured and draws blood and herds her and Cam off to X-Ray. By the time they've been thoroughly analyzed (she's fine—just bruises—Cam has a cracked rib), Sammy's been processed and Teal'c's face-down in a bed.

"Can I go home now?" she asks, climbing carefully up onto a table.

"Does this hurt?" Dr. Hooker asks, poking her ribs.

Of course it does. Idiot.

"If I tell you "no," can I go home? I just got punched a few times."

"In the _face!_ " Cam calls from the other side of the screen. _"Ow!"_

Whatever they're doing to him, she hopes it hurts.

"I wasn't punched," she says carefully. "I was slapped."

Dr. Hooker tells her to open her mouth. "Dr. Jackson, did you know you have abrasions on the inside of your left cheek?" he asks, after he takes the epithelial swab.

"Nope," she says blandly. "No idea."

#

Blood-draw, broad-spectrum antibiotic, urine sample (she looks in the bathroom mirror; her face doesn't look that bad by now) and sure, she feels like hell, but does that mean she can't go home?

Apparently.

Dr. Hooker wants to keep her for observation. Well, Sally's on the morning shift. Dani's sure she can make her see reason.

"You should go home, Sammy," she says. "Let Cassie see you."

"I will," Sammy says. "I just want to make sure Cam's all right."

#

They put him in the bed next to Dani's. Wheeling him in, because never mind the fact he hiked twelve kliks to get here (and that's just after they got away from the Lucians), once he's here, obviously he can't walk. Cuts and bruises all cleaned and stitched and taped; no concussion—she heard the techs say that already. He moves more stiffly getting into bed than he did back on Chulak; they've taped his ribs.

"Hey, Sam?" he says. "Hate to ask, but on your way home, could you stop by my place and take the turkey out of the freezer? I'm not sure when they're going to spring the three of us, and—"

This, Dani has finally realized, is the way Cam gives orders when he wants to be sneaky about it. Assumes you're going to do the whatever-it-is anyway and then wraps it up in some other thing, too. And you're halfway through going along with him, figuring it's your own idea and you're just helping him out, before you realize it wasn't. And there isn't really any good way to argue with him without sounding like you're an idiot, or insane, or some combination of both.

"Don't worry about a thing, Cam," Sammy says. "I'll just take it back to my place. Your bird will be in safe hands."

They grin at each other, and there's this weird moment of silent communication Dani can't quite catch. An artifact, she supposes, of the old relationship. The one they could, apparently, resume if they wanted to. Now.

"Doesn't matter if the dinner's a little late, so long as we're all here to eat it," Cam says, moving on.

Oh, god. She isn't going to get out of it after all.

Sammy leaves, and once they're both settled, one of the nurses comes around with pills-in-a-cup.

"I don't want any," Dani says promptly. If they drug her up, she won't be able to get out of here when the shift changes. "Colonel Mitchell needs his, though." Cam's a mess. He'll never get any sleep without a little help.

"If she doesn't have to take any pills, neither do I," Cam says promptly.

Oh, god, what is he? _Six?_

"Now, Colonel, Dr. Hooker ordered—" the nurse says. Indulgently. Dani doesn't know all the nursing staff well, but the woman looks familiar. Oh, god. She's one of the ones Sammy was talking to that day. About what Cam is like _in bed._

"Well, we just won't tell him I didn't take them, Dorrie. You can keep a secret, right?"

"Cam, take the damned pills," Dani snarls. "I'm not lying here all night listening to you—" she stops. 

He never complained. Not once.

"Hey, now, Dorrie," Cam says. "You wouldn't happen to have a cup of coffee to go along with those pills, now, would you? It's been about three days since I've had a decent cup of coffee, or Dr. Jackson either, and we sure have missed it."

"I'll see what I can do," Dorrie says. She sets the pill cups down on the table between the beds, and moves off.

"I will if you will," Cam says, when she's gone.

"I don't want to," Dani mutters sulkily. _Now who's six?_ a traitorous part of her mind asks.

"Good night's sleep," Cam says, as if she hasn't said anything. "Everything'll look better in the morning. We'll debrief, get Dr. Brightman to bust us out of here. Go home and get started on that dinner."

She wants to say she's going to be here all weekend, clearing up her backlog, but Dorrie's back, and she hasn't just brought two cups of coffee, she's brought _doughnuts._

"Dorrie, I love you," Cam says fervently.

Dorrie puts Cam's bed up and hands him his pills and a glass of water and then his coffee and a doughnut—one of the jelly ones; the nursing staff always has the best doughnuts on the night shift—and then she comes over to Dani's bed and Dani's already sitting up— _coffee_ —and before she knows it she's taken the pills, but there's coffee and a jelly doughnut, and, well… she wonders what kind of pie Cam is going to make for Thanksgiving? Just pumpkin, or something else too?

Dorrie sits on the edge of Cam's bed while he drinks his coffee, and they talk about her kids. She's a widow, Dani overhears. Boy and girl.

"Glad you came back, Colonel," she says.

"Couldn't keep me away," he says. "And come on, now, Dorrie? How many times I gotta tell you call me "Cam?" Everything you seen a' me, we gotta be on a first-name basis by now."

Whatever Dr. Hooker sent up for Cam must be stronger than he prescribed for her. She can feel that she's taken medication, but she isn't _loopy._ But the Carolina drawl is more pronounced now, and the good eye—the one not currently covered with a bandage—is heavy-lidded. Dorrie plucks the empty coffee cup from his fingers.

"Say goodnight, Cam," she says.

"Goodnight Cam," he answers obediently, settling back.

"What'd you give him?" she asks, when Dorrie turns to her. Her fingers are covered with powdered sugar. She licks them clean.

"Percodan," Dorrie says. "Done with that?"

"Yeah," Dani says, handing over her cup. "Thanks. I _really_ missed coffee."

Dorrie laughs. "Just ask whenever I'm on. If there's nothing against it in the orders, I'll try to hook you up."

"Another blanket?"

She's always cold in the Infirmary.

"Sure."

#

When she wakes up in the morning (nearly noon, actually) Sally's in, and Cam's awake too. After breakfast, Sally gives both of them another thorough examination, and lets them out of the Infirmary, but tells them they are not _(not not not)_ cleared for duty.

Teal'c has already been released. Same terms.

She dresses, goes back to her office long enough to find out their debrief is scheduled for 1300 (finds a note there from Sammy telling her she isn't allowed to work under Pain of Death), goes to shower (nobody let her shower last night because they were more interested in _drugging her senseless)_ goes to the Commissary to get more coffee, then goes back to her office, where she does what can't be counted as work because it's only the preliminary Mission Report on 452, and they're going to need that for the debriefing.

There are the usual summaries of the digests of the master mission reports of the other Teams. She skims it, then stops, and pulls up the full set of reports on SG-4's last mission.

On their way home, they took an unscheduled detour to KS7-535.

535 is where Alexi Vasilov took Anubis.

She doesn't know why they went. To cover Alexi with flowers? To take pictures? They know they don't dare bring the body back. Anubis is still in there.

Only he isn't, because when they came home, they reported that Colonel Alexi Vasilov…

Wasn't there any more.

(And no, Anubis hadn't jumped to any of them. She got to skip the hysterics-and-lockdown courtesy of Worrel. Small mercies.)

But.

This Lucian Alliance is expanding to the point of annoying the _Tok'ra._ Something (someone, and she thinks she knows who now) is creating a power vacuum, and there are some groups that are not slow to use it. Somebody's stealing Stargates using Anubis's beam technology. She'd just assumed it was Ba'al, who's never had much interest in the _Tau'ri_.

(She thinks of fire and knives and falling and forces herself to stop.)

General Landry's got the idiotic notion the _Goa'uld_ just decided (post-Anubis, post-Ba'al grabbing all of Anubis's toys) that attacking Earth would be biting off more than they can chew. It's a nice theory (it's a nice _fairytale_ ), and she's never believed it, but she'd hoped the part where the _Goa'uld_ were all fighting among themselves was true.

Apparently not.

"I thought Dr. Brightman said "no work,'" Cam says, coming in to her office.

"Mmmgph," she says, because she's crammed an entire candy bar into her mouth so she has both hands free for the keyboard. She glances up. Most of the bandages are off, but he still looks ... battered.

"This'll be gone in a couple days," he says, seeing her look.

She swallows. "This isn't work," she says. "We've got to explain everything to General Landry."

"Yeah, that's going to be interesting. 'Cause the only guy I know of who could'a stolen that Gate is Ba'al, and damned if I can figure out what he'd want with it."

She shrugs. She doesn't know either. Cam gets points for figuring it out, though. "Maybe not Ba'al," she says. "Colonel Vasilkov's body is gone from KS7-535. SG-4 filed a report."

"So Anubis is stealing Stargates?" Cam asks.

She shrugs again.

"Maybe him and Ba'al'll knock each other off."

"We can hope," she says. "But Ba'al was Anubis's vassal, and the _Tok'ra_ say—"

"Hope is a thing with feathers," Cam answers. She has a theory that his more surreal utterences are quotes from a source she doesn't recognize. "You figure we're going to get to keep those clothes?"

She also has a theory that he has a very short attention span.

"I don't ever want to see them again."

"Looked pretty good in them," Cam says.

Is that how he wants her to look? Is that what he _likes?_

"I wasn't hired for my looks," she says dismissively.

#

Debriefing is followed by a forty-eight hour stand down and-I-don't-want-to-see-any-of-you-on-this-Base-especially-you-Dr.-Jackson. When they come back on Tuesday, there will be the usual medical review-and-evaluation before they're back on the line. With Cam and Teal'c in the shape they're in, probably a couple of weeks before they go through the Gate again.

"Okay!" Cam says, as they leave. "Just enough time to cook Sunday dinner!"

"It's Saturday," Dani points out.

"Yup," he says. "Just enough time if you all help."

#

Cam's kitchen is tiny. (She already knew that). And she can't cook, not at all. (He already knew that.) But she can chop things, and stir things (if they're not on the stove), and apparently a lot of chopping and stirring is required. After hearing Cam's plans on the way to the parking lot, Dani drives home and changes the Jeep out for the truck—a good thing, as Sammy has to go get the folding tables and come back and set them up in Cam's living room so the pies have a place to cool. Everything that can be done the day before is being done—which means the pies, and a couple of the kinds of bread, and the cranberry sauce (relish). Dani thought it came out of cans. Apparently not.

"Cam, how many people are you inviting?" she asks. She'd thought it was just the five of them. But he's already made that many pies, and two loaves of fruit bread.

"Just us, baby. How's that bread looking?"

She peers under the cloth into the bowl. "Hasn't risen yet."

"Well, we won't worry about it. I'll just finish up with the stuffing—it's a lot better if it gets to set overnight—and in the morning all we'll have to do is the potatoes and the cornbread and the turkey. Sam's bringing the yams and the green bean casserole, so we're covered there. And broccoli doesn't take any time at all."

"You _do_ know there's only five of us?"

"I can count. I'm good at counting."

"You made five pies."

"Pumpkin, cherry-apple, pecan, black-bottom pecan, and shoo-fly. You think I ought to do a mince pie? There's still time."

"I think you're going to be eating leftovers until March."

"With Teal'c around? Never happen."

#

They use Sammy's folding tables the next day, too, to hold all the dishes.

There's gravy, and biscuits, and (if you count the biscuits) five kinds of bread, two kinds of potatoes, stuffing, broccoli, green beans in cream of mushroom sauce with canned onion rings on top ("Have to have it," Sammy says, and Cam agrees) three kinds of olives and a bunch of other raw vegetables on a tray ("My mother would kill me if I left that out," Sammy says, and Cam nods as if that actually makes sense), cranberry sauce, baked apples ("Last minute decision," Cam says, "I had all the ingredients."), and all that's before they even get to the turkey.

And _that's_ before the (ohgod) pies. And Sammy's brought the quick-set ice-cream freezer with her, and all the ingredients they need to make enough ice cream to probably kill them all.

"Not bad for a last-minute scratch meal," Cam says. "But you folks have _got_ to come to Thanksgiving at my Momma's house and really see what a good dinner is like. Sam knows."

Sammy groans. Happily.

#

Cam says "grace" before the meal. Sort of. Not really. Just a quick: "I am really thankful we are all here to eat this," but that's what it is.

She won't say she's thankful for Cam. She can't.

Over the meal, he and Sammy swap "Thanksgiving" stories. She's heard Sammy's. Cam's are outrageous.

Teal'c and Cassie don't have the custom, of course.

"Hey, Dani, what about you?" Cam says.

"Never did it," she says.

"You never celebrated _Thanksgiving?_ " he asks, as if she's just confessed to cannibalism.

She shrugs. "No."

He looks so surprised. Well, he knows she's American, after all.

"Okay. Yes. But only recently. It's more of a, you know—"

Something that people with families do.

"Oh, wait," Sammy says. "Dani, tell Cam about the time Teal'c deep-fried the turkey for Thanksgiving."

She blinks at Sammy. They did that with Jack, in General Hammond's back yard. Four years ago? No, five.

But Sammy is looking happy—remembering, as Cassie and Teal'c are, the fireball slowly rolling toward the sky, and everybody's stunned expressions, and how General Hammond had come running out of the house followed by his other guests just in time to hear the wail of the approaching fire trucks...

And she doesn't want to. But she doesn't think it's really _fair_ to shut Cam out of their past. They're his team now, after all. And it's one of the few Thanksgiving stories she has; that's why Sammy wanted her to tell it, instead of telling it herself. So she prepares herself to begin.

"Well, that was the year Teal'c finally got cable—you remember, Teal'c?—and you were watching those cooking shows?"

Teal'c inclines his head gravely. He's never going to admit he was at fault on this one. Never.

They should have defrosted the turkey first.

#

After the meal (before dessert), they retreat to the couch to recover. "Recover" is pretty much the word. Death by tryptophan poisoning. As a death, it isn't bad. Dani's an informed consumer.

She can't even make it as far as the couch. She sits sprawled on the floor, leaning against it. Cassie's in the corner on her computer, IMing to her friends. She isn't even complaining about being trapped here with her ancient Aunt Sam over the weekend. Sammy was missing for four days. That's enough to make Cassie a little clingy.

Cam is catching up with all the games he TiVoed while he was gone. It may be Sunday here, but on television, it's Thursday, and the Turkey Bowl Game (whatever) is being played. Neanderthal idiocy at its finest. Dani hardly cares, though, because she's been stunned into submission by more food and drink than she thought she could possibly consume.

For that reason, it takes her a while to notice somebody's playing with her hair.

It isn't Teal'c—not that he'd ever do something like that in a million years. Teal'c's in his usual spot, at the far end of the couch, apparently intent on the commercials that Cam, for some reason, doesn't cut out. And when Cassie says something, and Sammy answers—she realizes it isn't Sammy, because even though Cam usually takes the end of the couch and Sammy sits next to him, tonight, for some reason, they've switched places, and Sammy's on the end and Cam is above Dani. It's his leg she's leaning against.

He's the one playing with her hair. Just shifting a few strands of the top. Lightly.

It's probably annoying, so she squirms down a few inches, and his hand just settles on her shoulder, with his thumb resting against the side of her neck. And she sighs long-sufferingly, but she doesn't move.

Ten days later they're back in the rotation.

#

December.

Cam's hoping to go home for Christmas. _Really_ hoping. General Landry has said he'll do what he can—and all non-essential missions are cancelled for the last two weeks of December traditionally, but somebody has to mind the store, and it was always them—SG-1—because where else did any of them have to go? _She_ still doesn't have anywhere, though Cam has invited her to come home with him for the holiday. He's invited Sammy, too, and Cassie. He's even invited Teal'c, but it takes Pentagon approval to allow Teal'c out of the state of Colorado (unless he's going through the Gate, which doesn't count because nothing that isn't on Earth counts in the webby mind of the United States Government), and they aren't going to get it so he can spend Christmas at Cameron Mitchell's house.

Nick died last November and she doesn't really remember that December and the one before it Jack was still … here.

And she thought he always would be. _(He isn't dead. He just isn't here. Not dead.)_

But now it's the joyous season yet again, and everybody's on edge (everybody in the Western World, that is, not them, SG-1, in particular), and Gary (he said his name was Gary, and he might even have been telling the truth) hit her _just right_ and now she's got a fucking shiner that no amount of makeup is going to cover and even Worrel hadn't managed to mark her face up.

She spends all the time she can pry loose from everything else she does going to bars, and has been managing (these days) to get out about twice a month. It's something she's been doing for eight years now. She supposes it falls into the category of Bad For You, not that she really gives a damn. Anonymous, impersonal, unsatisfying sex in an anonymous, impersonal, unsatisfying hotel room. Isn't that normal? Men do it. She's always told herself it's about stress release. Displacement. Not Hathor and betrayal and rape and needing to deal with complicity. With failure. She's never cared to map the byways of the symbolic shadowplay in her mind. It isn't dangerous—not in comparison to her Day Job—and if it makes her able to do that job, it's nobody's business but hers. When she's working out all the logistics of casual sex—picking up a man and taking him back to a hotel room and a graceful exit strategy in the morning if he decides to stay all night—it makes Everything Else _shut up_ for a while. And if the night is memorable enough (in some way or another) she can be sure that the nightmares, or the possibility of nightmares, will stop for a few days too.

Maybe it's a way of being someone else. Maybe it's a way of being treated the way she…

_needs? deserves? expects?_

Maybe it's a way of achieving some kind of balance. And nobody dies. She sleeps well afterward. That's a plus. But since Cam arrived back in July, it's harder to find the time. There's Team Nights (which means Fridays are out), and well, he doesn't restrict his interest-and-involvement in their lives to that. He's always _around._

Sammy's happier, though. Sammy's been lonely since Janet died.

At least Janet is dead and they had a body to bury.

It's traitorous and unreasonable and _wrong_ to think it, because she doesn't want Janet to be dead and shouldn't she be glad there's at least a _chance_ of getting Jack back?

She wonders what it will be like if— _when!_ —they do. For him. For them. Will he come back to the SGC? And how much will he remember after 439 itself? A day or two, perhaps. Almost certainly. But then ... he'll simply wake up, and it will be two years (or how many more?) later. The world will have moved on, as if he were a coma patient miraculously awakened, and he'll have to ... adjust.

He's bad at things like that. He'll probably retire. Would this be three times or four?

At least they have Cam now, and SG-1 is safe.

And she hates thinking things like that even more—not in the part of her mind where she does her job and goes through the Gate and saves the world, because that's its own place (has been for years, reasonably safe and very secure); not in the part of her mind where she keeps her Outside World life running (laundry, bills, paperwork, and all the constant chores of _having a house;_ she's gotten all of that organized, automated, and handed over to others as far as humanly possible; she's never home), but in the part of her mind (murky, unexamined) where Everything Else lives. And that part has been clamoring for her attention more and more lately, and she can't bear to acknowledge that some day she won't be able to make it _shut the fuck up_ any more. And when she has to hear it, what will it say? What will she have to know? What will she have to _do_? 

_Not now. Not yet. Not today._

Somehow, the better things are in her outside world, the worse they get in here. She craves the absolution of degradation so much that (tonight, this time) she isn't as careful as she should be. Gary wasn't a good choice. He'd bought her a drink and she'd seen the ring-scar on his hand and she knew he'd just taken off a wedding ring a minute or so ago, but she'd told herself _"divorced."_

He didn't care about her, he didn't want to know her, he said all the push-button things to get her into bed. Fine. And they got back to her room, both of them a little too drunk (it's why she puts her keys in the hotel safe along with all her ID when she does this), and they were both here for only one thing, so why postpone it? She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of her dress and he grinned at her and made some stupid joke and tossed his jacket over the chair and said _why don't you get us both a drink, honey?_ and sat down to take off his shoes.

He was standing there in his shorts by the time she got the bottle open and poured, and she brought the drinks over and her foot hit something, and she handed him his glass and set hers on the table and bent down to pick it up. His wallet. One of the big ones, and if he _had_ to carry something like that, why in his pants pocket? It had fallen open when it hit the rug. Women's picture tucked in over the driver's license. Pretty and plain and smiling.

And she'd _known,_ because it's her business to know, Gary wasn't divorced. But they were both half-naked, and if she confronted him now, he'd just lie. So she'd handed him his wallet and said _I'm not that kind of a girl_ and he grinned at her and she turned back the bed and sat down to unclip her stockings and take off her garter belt. (Everything but the slip, because there are scars under there she doesn't want to explain.)

The foreplay was annoying (it always is), but she prides herself on performing her responses flawlessly. Theater of the mind, and she's actor, director, audience and they always believe her, and having her lies accepted so readily is the most soothing part of all, she thinks. There are condoms on the nightstand and she hands him one. He puts it on. And slips it off in the next gesture, but she doesn't realize that until he's in her and trying (clumsily, unsuccessfully) to hide it under the pillow. And she grabs it, and he smiles (smug and sheepish) and says: _I didn't think you'd mind, honey. You're on the Pill, right?_

She pushes at his shoulders, but he won't move. _You'll like it better this way,_ he says, starting to thrust. And she struggles, and there's no pretense now that she's cooperating. She freezes for a moment, as hotel room and offworld conflate in her mind. Rapes and beatings and all part of the job, never complain, never notice or you'll spend the rest of your life behind a desk and you'll be dead, your team will be dead—

_(Jack will be dead.)_

—and she gets her legs under his and shoves. He falls to the floor.

"Come on, Gary, play nice," she says, getting up to stand over him. She smooths down her slip. Her mind is already mapping graceful strategies to let him save face and leave. Or maybe they can try again. She's got a whole box of condoms, and bad sex is what she's here for, after all.

He scrambles to his feet, and she just has time to register that his face is blank and his body language is wrong when he hits her. Open hand, backhand, _casual_. Shut up, whore. She's caught by surprise. She staggers. Her legs hit the edge of the mattress, and he's taking a step forward. He wants to hit her again. She can tell. ( _Whore._ ) 

This isn't how it's supposed to go.

(If you run, they'll only chase you.)

"You don't want to explain this to your wife," she says flatly.

He stops.

"I saw your driver's license," she says, bluffing.

And now he's taking a step back, and his face is starting to twist in self pity, and he's saying he's sorry, he didn't mean it, he's never hit anyone, she startled him, he's under a lot of stress, and it's okay, isn't it, Alex?

She always tells them her name is Alex.

"I think we'd better call it a night," she says. She walks away (between him and the door, can't be helped, his clothes are by the window), hoping this is enough, that she won't have to fight, because the hotel room is _in her name_ …

"I just wanted us to have fun," he says pleadingly.

_And bring home a nasty surprise to your wife, Gary?_ The words are under her tongue. She swallows them. She doesn't know what she wants, what she should do now, and it worries her. A little. A lot. Her silence makes him scramble into his clothes. He rushes for the door, clutching shoes and coat and wallet, unbuckled belt flapping. And she locks all the locks behind him and pours herself another drink.

Such a fine line. Such an inevitable progression. Shock to self-pity to justification to anger and a few more moments and he would have been angry again, defensive, _entitled_ , and if she had to hit him, hurt him, _stop_ him what could she say afterward? How could she explain? (Who would she be explaining to?)

There's a soft tapping on her door. "Honey? Alex?"

She goes into the bathroom. Her makeup is smeared and her face is swollen. She washes her face; she filled the ice bucket before she went out and there's a slurry of ice and water in it now. She fills her glass with cubes and Scotch and makes an ice pack. It drips down onto her slip, making the silk cling clammily. 

The tapping has stopped. There's something on the floor, shoved under the door. She approaches warily. She doesn't look through the peephole (you can see that from outside if you're looking). 

It's a fifty dollar bill.

She retreats to the unused bed, circles back for the Scotch, and sits, and drinks, holding the icepack over her face. When the ice is gone, she goes and showers, and folds away her harlot clothes and packs them and puts on her tshirt and makes another ice pack and gets into bed.

She doesn't turn off the lights. 

She sleeps deep and dreamlessly.

(She'll leave the fifty for the maid.)

In the morning the eye is swollen half-shut and already turning colors.

"Oh... just... peachy," she says to the bathroom mirror. It's Saturday morning, the middle of December, and they didn't have Movie Night last night but today they're all supposed to be at Sammy's to bake cookies and decorate the damned tree.

She drives home. No decorations at her house _(Jack's house)._ Well, that's nothing new; she's never decorated for seasonal ritual observances, wherever she was. On the other hand, by the end of today Sammy's place is going to look like every possible Christmas movie ever made has moved in there and died.

The driveway's been freshly-plowed. She opens the garage from inside the Jeep and pulls up inside, beside the truck. She drives it to keep the battery charged and everything in tune. Drove it a couple of days ago, in fact, to pick up the tree from the lot, just her and Cassie and Sammy, though Cam and Teal'c met them there, naturally, so everybody could offer an opinion on the tree. It took _two hours_ to pick it out, and by then she was so cold her teeth were chattering, and Cam had just opened up his coat and swooped her inside.

_"Baby, we gotta get you a warmer coat!" he'd said, laughing._

_She would have struggled harder if she hadn't been so damned cold. "This is the warmest jacket Land's End makes," she'd said crossly. "I hate the cold."_

_"Well, then, we gotta find some other way to warm you up."_

And they'd put the tree in the truck and gone back to Sammy's house and he'd made _cocoa._ With marshmallows.

And she'd drunk it, and it was hot and it was good and it felt like treason.

Now she goes into the kitchen and starts coffee—the espresso maker looms in the corner, but the creation of espresso is an elaborate production, not suitable for her mood right now—then goes to find aspirin.

Her face is a mess, and she thinks desperately of all the possible excuses she can deploy to get out of this afternoon. Work? No. Sudden illness? Unconvincing. A desire to never see any of them again? Closer to the truth, but she'll have to see them Monday, and she doesn't think this is going to be gone by then. It will probably just be a different color.

She guesses she'd better spend the time between now and far-too-soon coming up with a good explanation for what the hell _happened,_ considering she has no intention of telling the truth.

By the time she pulls up in the driveway, Sammy has already called twice to find out _where the hell she is,_ and she's spun Sammy the "got up late" story, which is almost true. Sammy will forgive her that one, because Sammy doesn't think she gets enough sleep. She's wearing a hat and her dark glasses, but she knows the bruise still shows.

When she walks up to the door, it's Cam who opens it. She hangs up coat, hat, scarf. Pulls the clips off her sunglasses and tucks them into the hard-sided case she got for her birthday (actually useful). Puts that in her coat pocket. Turns around, and Cam is looking at her with the expression of somebody who knows she went three rounds with _something_ and lost.

"I. Ran. In. To. A. _Door,_ " she says, and it's a lie, and an unconvincing one—she knows that—but then, their cover stories have never really been very good.

She starts to walk past him—down the hall, to Sammy, Teal'c, Cassie, more recriminations—when he steps up behind her and wraps his arms around her, pulling her back against his torso. She's so startled she just freezes in place, and he drops his chin onto her shoulder and sighs.

"Baby, baby, baby, you have _got_ to be more careful."

She puts her hands up over his—going to tear them loose, elbow him in the ribs and leave him a bruise he'll really remember, this is _touching,_ full-body touching, and where the hell did he get the idea he was allowed to do that—when she realizes (it's her job to realize things, and nothing, not injury, not grief, not even her own stupidity, will keep her from it)—that not only does he somehow know _exactly_ how she got that black eye (someone hit her, a man hit her, she went out to a bar and found a man to fuck and he hit her), he isn't telling her to stop.

He's just telling her to be careful.

And then she realizes the second thing, the thing she hadn't let herself think about until now because there wasn't anything she could do about it at the time, and she goes absolutely rigid.

And Cam is unwrapping himself from her and he's got an arm around her shoulders and he's opening the door to the little room off the hall Sammy uses as her office and they're inside and he's closing the door and pulling out the chair and sitting her down and kneeling down in front of it and taking both her hands.

And she's holding his tightly because she's afraid.

"Dani?"

"I had unprotected sex." The sentence comes out in a damning rush.

Unprotected sex; she already knows Gary is both promiscuous and reckless, and she doesn't know anything else about him except a first name that might not be his. And a garden-variety STD will be bad enough, but what if he gave her something worse?

Cam actually looks a little relieved. He squeezes her hands. "We'll get you tested," he says quietly. "If there's a problem, we'll fix it."

She's still expecting disgust, rejection, condemnation, a lecture on her morals. Nice Girls Don't Do Things Like That. She knows (from talking to Sammy over the years) that if Sammy had ever done equivalent things, Sammy's career would have stalled out a long time ago. The Air Force expects its unmarried female officers to be Vestal Virgins. Men marry to advance. Women embrace celibacy. But Cam just shakes his head, and he's smiling a little now. 

"You know, I figured, when we came in here, Teal'c and I were going to have to spend the afternoon figuring out how to hide a body."

She stares at him, trying to figure out, well ... _everything._ Including why she just told Cam what she did. "I can hide my own bodies," she says slowly.

He smiles all the way now. It's the one she thinks of as his "sun coming up" smile. He's got a lot of different ones. "Bet you could."

"I can."

"Sure, sure. But what are friends for?"

_Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies._ One of Sammy's favorite sayings. She pulls her hands out of his and Cam gets to his feet.

"Come on. I'm pretty sure the gingerbread men are probably cool enough to decorate now, and I _think_ the next batch of sugar cookies are about due out of the oven."

They go off to the kitchen and Sammy gets a look at her face and starts to say something and Cam drapes an arm around her shoulder and says "isn't ice a bitch?" and Dani doesn't even have to lie at all.

#

Cam goes home for Christmas. He takes Sammy and Cassie with him. A whole week's leave. Dani flatly refuses to have anything to do with the entire idea. Christmas. Meeting his alleged relatives. Leaving the State of Colorado. Bad enough that apparently he knows she moonlights as an unpaid call-girl. Worse that he either doesn't notice or seem to mind.

At first Sammy waffles about staying—not wanting to go and leave her All Alone—and she actually yells at Sammy, telling her _Teal'c_ will be here, Teal'c is _always_ here, how would it be if they _all_ deserted Teal'c and left him alone, and she should go, go, go, take Cassie and _go._

She doesn't get any more trouble out of Sammy after that. Or out of Cam, either, and there was no way in hell _he_ was going to be staying.

Her first test came back negative. She found a place where you could do it on-line, so discreet that probably only the NID knows—and it came back clean for everything else she could possibly have picked up from her Dream Date. (Sally draws blood after every mission, but this isn't the kind of thing she'd find unless she was looking for it. Please, god.) But since Dani now knows more than she really wants to about seroconversion periods, she knows to be really sure she needs to do it again at three months and six months to be out of the HIV-scare woods (unless she ends up having a very unpleasant chat with Sally sometime before that). Probably Gary wasn't a carrier, and she seems to have dodged the rest of the bullets in the clip. "Probably" isn't good enough.

Funny, in a way, that she'd end up being most at-risk for something she did right here on Earth than anything she does in her day job.

She sees them all off at the airport. Even Cassie is excited about going. Dani helped them ship their packages ahead of time (can't carry a wrapped package on a flight these days, and Cam has dozens).

She even bought Cam a present. It's in with the others. Can't mail bourbon (her first choice) so she got him a Denver Broncos sweatshirt. The man should at least make an effort to remember what state he's living in.

Her gift to Sammy is a slide-rule. An antique. (Last year she got her an astrolabe.) And a bottle of that really expensive vodka she likes, but there's an IOU for that, tucked in with the slide-rule. She'll take the actual bottle over and leave it at Sammy's while she's gone.

Cassie's gift is a t-shirt and a gift-card. Dani's never quite sure any more what Cassie would like.

#

Christmas Eve. Trees and families and presents and all the things lost stolen or strayed almost before she knew they existed. On Christmas Eve, she and Teal'c drive around to look at all the Christmas lights. It's a tradition. Afterward, they go out for sushi, because most of the other places are closed and because Teal'c loves sushi.

She gives Teal'c his present on when she takes him back to Base. It's a complete collection of Humphrey Bogart movies. He won't open it now: once Teal'c figures out a _Tau'ri_ custom, he's a stickler for observing it. He'll wait for Christmas Day.

She goes all the way inside with him so he can give her her presents. Not just the one from him, but everyone's. People have been stashing them with him for weeks, because they know he won't let her have them early, but she isn't coming in tomorrow, so he's relenting a little. It's an awkward pile, and she has to cadge a garbage bag from the Commissary to get them all to her Jeep, because a couple of them are big.

She drives home, lugging through the snow, grateful, as always, for four-wheel-drive. Sammy called when they arrived at Cam's (yesterday) and said it was sixty there. Lucky Sammy.

She gets home and builds a fire. Lights it, really. It's already laid.

Her kitchen is full of Christmas cookies. Between them, Sammy and Cam made so many they've been foisting them off on people for days. And there are still about four dozen in her kitchen. When Cassie was younger, they used to decorate the gingerbread men as SG Teams, or as Egyptian gods. The cookies are a little more conventional this year. She goes into the kitchen, takes a cookie, debates, and gears up the bright orange monster sitting on her counter. You can make cappuccinos with it, too, and she doesn't exactly feel like Scotch right now. She browses the cookies while the milk steams—sugar cookies, gingerbread men, more exotic offerings. When the coffee is ready, she takes it into the living room and turns to her presents. She sorts them first, meticulously.

Scarf from Amelia (good, since she's always losing them), blank journal from Nyan, the usual suspects from the rest of her acquaintance: tokens of familiarity, really, and accepted in that spirit (Dani has an extensive gift-list within the SGC, but over the years she's learned to bestow them at the last minute, in case somebody dies unexpectedly). She burns the wrappings and packaging as she opens each one; the foil and ribbons and cardboard are consumed by the flames in a sparkle and hiss. It's tidy.

Scotch from Sammy, and a gold-plated hex wrench; a cryptic souvenir. Well, you never know. Might come in useful.

From Cassie (in the spirit of hope) a blue cashmere sweater. Dani groans, faintly. She supposes it won't kill her to wear it, though. At least once.

The biggest box is Teal'c's. She opens that next.

He's bought her ... a hat.

Her first thought is "stuffed animal" and her second is "muff." But no, it's a hat. It's white and furry and cylindrical and it has two long cords that end in sort of ... pom-poms ... and all she can think of is _The Wizard of Oz,_ because if she puts this on, she is going to look _just_ like the guards at the castle of The Wicked Witch of the West.

She plops it on her head experimentally. Well, it fits.

She goes to look in the mirror. Yup. Evil Palace Guard. Sort of. And she's going to _have_ to wear it.

Seems to be warm.

Which just leaves Cam's gift.

The box isn't very big.

She opens it. Wads of tissue, and when she pulls them away, the first thing she notices is the familiar sweet scent of gently-rotting leather and decaying vellum. A book. Tiny. About the size of a modern paperback. She lifts the octavo volume carefully out of the box and opens the cover carefully to check the title page. When she sees what it is, her eyes widen.

_Cults of the Sun._ The original 1799 private printing. It even has the hand-colored plates. It was later reprinted (she has that version) but the reprint was heavily-edited. She's been trying to get her hands on a copy of this _for years._

Where did he find it? How much did he _spend?_ And—more to the point—who did he have to kill to get it, because there's one in the British Museum, one in the Vatican, and she knows of three other copies in the hands of private collectors, none of whom were willing to sell the last time she checked.

Pretty close to the best Christmas present ever.

She goes to get a pair of cotton gloves, and sits up and reads until morning.

She's awakened by the ringing of her phone. She opens her eyes, checks her watch. Noon.

Christmas Day.

She pulls out her cell-phone (asleep on the couch, still dressed, book carefully set aside). Sammy is calling to wish her a "Merry Christmas." There's a lot of background noise.

"I'd forgotten what it was like here!" Sammy shouts.

"Cam got me a book!" Dani shouts back. "It's cool!"

Cam grabs the phone away from Sammy to say something, but she can't understand it. He's laughing too hard. She wishes him a "Merry Christmas" and hangs up.

#

She and Teal'c meet them when they fly back on the 28th. Sammy's eyes widen at the sight of the hat, and Cam says "Sonja Heine," but she's used (by now) to the fact that half the things he says make no sense at all.

 _Teal'c,_ she mouths, because Teal'c's standing right there, and for god's sake, does Sammy think she'd buy something like that for _herself?_

"We'll just have to take you ice-skating, then," Cam says.

"No," she says firmly. "We won't."

She assures Cassie absolutely the sweater was perfect, and tells Cassie she even has it on at this very moment (true). It's not as tight as the leather t-shirt, but tighter than everything in her closet except her formal clothes and her call-girl dresses. Nothing she owns actually goes with it, she thinks, though her suit-skirts come closest.

It's cramped with five of them in the truck, but all the luggage is in the back, under the tarp-top, so there's room (barely) inside for all of them. It's got a four-seat cab, and Cassie sits on Teal'c's lap. She talks about Christmas at Cam's house. Cam says not to say too much, because "we don't want to scare her, or else she'll never come for a visit."

"It's pretty unlikely," Dani says. Gently, because, well, he got her that _book._

"You never know," Cam says cheerfully.

Oh yes she does.

#

In January SG-1 is given the job of babysitting a group of IOA delegates who feel they need to go through the Stargate in order to recommend the release of more funds. Since the Disclosure Conference (pre-Disclosure, actually, since they're calling "telling-everybody-on-Earth" Disclosure, not that it's going to actually happen in her lifetime, Dani thinks) and the establishment of Homeworld Security, their foreign allies (so-called) have a greater role in the running of the Stargate Program than ever before. They contribute to the SGC's operating budget now, and in exchange, the Pentagon shares intelligence and technology (sort of). Now the IOA wants to see how its money is being spent. Specifically, Britain, France, and China, being ridden herd on by the US-thorn-in-their-side, Richard Woolsey, who's changed allegiances so many times they might as well just call him Talleyrand.

None of them is thrilled by the job (even Cam), especially since a much-more-interesting mission was scrubbed so SG-1 (at the IOA's special request) could spend three days following them around the Gamma Site. Kiss-ass diplomatic missions, fine. But does it have to be with a bunch of deranged starfucking Earth bureaucrats who are undoubtedly going to want to hear tales of the glamorous life they all lead? 

In the Gate Room, Woolsey twitches and quivers, and Shen tries to score points, first by speaking Mandarin instead of English (in which she is fluent), and then by criticizing Dani's accent. Okay, it's not that good; Mandarin is the most common dialect—the closest thing to an "official language" China has—but Dani's fluent in Cantonese, not Mandarin.

Shen asks if they're bringing Cam along.

_" <He's our leader. Of course we are.>"_

_" <We sympathize with your loss.>"_ Shen smiles like a cat with a mouse.

_" <When one door closes, another one opens.>"_ That's Cam. His accent is blurry, but he's perfectly understandable.

She didn't know he spoke Mandarin.

#

She's bored, Cam's bored, Teal'c's bored. Sammy's having fun. The whole purpose of this mission (secretly, politically) is to keep China from pulling out of the IOA. If they do, their next step is probably be to go public about the Stargate.

Shen keeps backing Dani into corners, hinting that her talents are wasted where she is, and that she could get a much better deal elsewhere.

Dani points out to Cam (alone, when they're in quarters, the four of them, at night) that China's actually got a certain reason to be pissed-off: the Gate Alliance Treaty mandates _all_ offworld technology is to be shared among member nations. It's currently being interpreted as "all non-military technology discovered since we signed the treaty." That doesn't go over well.

"You think they'd use it responsibly? Hell, _we_ don't use it responsibly most of the time. Look at the NID. Look at the Trust," Cam says.

"I know," she says.

By the end of Day Three they're wild to get home. Woolsey fusses, Chapman and LaPierre have been pleased by everything, Shen just looks bland. By now the IOA has seen every inch of the place—except, of course, the parts Shen wants to see most, the restricted military areas. But now they're (finally!) heading back for the Gate.

And just before they get there, one of the scientists—Myers—comes staggering out into the corridor and passes out at their feet.

Well, scratch leaving on schedule.

Apparently Myers was bitten by one of his pet bugs. R-75. They breached containment yesterday, but he'd seemed to be fine.

Now he isn't. The IOA is herded back to a holding area. Colonel Pearson has instituted containment-and-quarantine proceedings—which means they're stuck here. Myers is going back to Earth though (sealed in a hazmat container): it's the only place he can receive the level of treatment he needs. After that, they're in lockdown.

Woolsey is pitching a fit: if Myers gets to go, why can't _they_ go?

Dani wonders if they're going to get the unalloyed joy of wrestling him to the ground in the name of National Security, to keep him from making a break for the Gate Room while Myers is transported back to Earth. She and Teal'c are babysitting while Sammy and Cam try to get more information out of Colonel Pearson.

But then things start to go _really_ wrong. She later hears that Myers' containment chamber burst open and thousands of bugs came swarming out (on this side of the Gate, small mercies). What Dani knows at the time is she's just about to shoot Woolsey when all the sirens go off and Cam and Sammy come running up the corridor, herding them all back toward the elevator and up to the Briefing Room.

She hears gunfire behind them.

"What's going on?" Woolsey demands.

"We've got a bit of a bug problem," Cam answers.

#

In the Briefing Room, there's nothing to do but wait for news. Woolsey paces while the rest of them are seated. Sammy theorizes that R-75 laid eggs in Myers when it bit him, and they incubated. R-75 was supposed to be herbivorous (they've been studying them here in order to figure out how to destroy them), but apparently it can adapt. It's carnivorous now. Humans are on the menu.

About the time all the lights go out, Colonel Pearson arrives.

The Gate Room's been overrun. He's lost a couple of men. He tells Woolsey he'll send an SF to escort the delegation to the surface while the rest of them clear the complex. Fine. That's what they're trained for, after all. But Woolsey, damn him, isn't having it. SG-1 is supposed to protect them, on orders from the Pentagon, and he insists SG-1 is to stay with them. Every step of the way.

They can't talk him out of it.

Finally Pearson (in disgust) orders them to convey the delegation to an unmanned research station about ten kliks from here. He details two airmen (Walker and DeAngelo) to escort them there, since it's one of the places they haven't gone in their extensive visit to beautiful Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

It's a long climb to the surface; the elevators are out. All of them are thinking—and nobody is saying—they should be down there. Back in the complex. Doing _their real jobs._

They reach the surface and start walking. And Woolsey _does not shut up._ Can't they stay right here? Can't they take a jeep?

Cam and Sammy are up at the front with Walker—and oh, god, if Shen does ten kliks in those shoes Dani's pretty sure she'll never walk again—and she and Teal'c are in back with DeAngelo, because none of them puts it past these idiots not to either stop or wander off, and suddenly Teal'c stops, and she stops, and then she can hear it too. A sort of scuttling, chittering noise, and by then Sammy and Cam have stopped too.

"It's R-75," Sammy says.

And Teal'c grabs her and yanks her back just as the ground opens up and a horde of the things she saw in a glass case two days ago erupt up out of the broken earth and swarm over DeAngelo.

He's dead too fast for a mercy killing.

"Move, move, _move!_ " Cam shouts, and they run. (She has no idea how Shen manages to run in those shoes.)

They stop about a klik away, on the edge of a cliff, on top of a large flat rock.

"I think we may assume that R-75 has gotten off the Base," Chapman says. British understatement at its finest.

"Echolocation," Sammy says. "They must use it to hunt their prey."

"Us," Dani says. Teal'c nods grimly.

"What do we do? Where can we go? They move underground," LaPierre says. Dani remembers he has a degree in botany. He probably actually paid attention to the bug-lecture.

"Rocky terrain. Somewhere difficult for them to move," Cam says.

"We could try the caves, sir," Walker says. (If both Walker and DeAngelo had died just now, the rest of them would be dead too because they don't know the area and they don't have time to learn.) They head for the caves at a dead run. R-75 is after them.

They make it inside. But that isn't going to do them a damned bit of good if the bugs _follow them in._ The ground outside is covered with a wave of beetles, a mass that reminds Dani of a migrating ant colony, but a million times more lethal.

"Shoot at them!" Sammy yells. "The noise will scare them off!"

Cam looks at Sammy like she's out of her mind, but he unlimbers his P90, steps to the entrance, and fires. Sammy and Cam spray the ground with bullets.

R-75 retreats.

"Okay!" Cam says. "Listen up! We're surrounded by solid rock, and we've got the entrance covered. Everything's going to be fine!"

_Until we run out of bullets,_ Dani thinks. She doesn't say it aloud. The last thing she wants is to hear Woolsey start bleating again.

Cam and Sammy have P90s. Teal'c wasn't authorized to carry his staff-weapon for this trip, so he only has his zat, which probably won't work against R-75. She has her Beretta. Walker has an MP5—which means his rounds aren't interchangeable with theirs—and they lost everything DeAngelo was carrying. 

None of the delegates is armed.

#

In an ideal world, Colonel Pearson would come riding over the horizon to tell them he'd taken back the Gamma Site, found a way to kill R-75, and they could all go home. In reality, they sit and keep watch, and he doesn't. Cam tries to raise the Base at hourly intervals. Nothing.

At least R-75 doesn't show up again. This makes the IOA happy, but it makes the rest of them think the bugs have found more to eat elsewhere. There are almost two hundred people at the Gamma Site.

SG-1 wasn't geared for a hike—they don't even have canteens—and there wasn't any time to supply before they left. At least they have their tac-vests—General Landry wanted them all to look nice and scary for the IOA—and Walker's pack (because there were packs ready-to-go at the entrance, and both he and DeAngelo each grabbed one automatically) holds climbing gear, a compass, a first-aid kit, a couple of lanterns, and two liters of water. Sammy says the lanterns won't attract R-75, and may actually keep it away once it gets dark.

When it gets dark, they (meaning SG-1) dig into their tac-vests and share around Powerbars, and then one of the liters of water. Shen takes hers in a meditative silence. LaPierre grimaces. Chapman does his best to look cheerful about things (though Dani can tell the man is scared to death). Woolsey bitches about his blood sugar, and the fact all this is going in his report. 

They stand two-hour watches through the night, drawing straws for who-gets-what, except for Walker. He had first watch, so he gets the last one.

#

She has mid-watch, and she hates that one. A few hours sleep, then roused to stand watch clutching Sammy's P90 and hoping she doesn't hear anything, then back to bed. Bed is bare rock. Woolsey complains about his back until Sammy reminds him the bugs hunt by sound, when he shuts up and doesn't say another word all night. Dani manages to sleep anyway, curled up next to whoever isn't on watch. It's warmer.

Cam wakes her up in the morning by throwing another Powerbar at her. He and Teal'c are talking about heading back to the Base for the 302s. He still hasn't been able to raise Colonel Pearson on the radio, and this place isn't going to be safe for very long.

She staggers to her feet, wondering if this cave is deep enough so she can pee in decent privacy. She'd go outside, but modesty isn't worth dying for. Maybe she'll make Cam herd all the guys up to the front so she, Shen, and Sammy can have the back for a few minutes.

She fishes a second Powerbar out of her vest and goes off to the front of the cave to see if anybody gave Walker breakfast yet.

He isn't there.

#

"Walker's gone," she says softly, bending over Cam.

Cam gets to his feet in a hurry. He looks at her. She shrugs. 

"Teal'c's our best tracker," he says quietly. "Sam, give him your weapon."

Sammy passes her P90 to Teal'c.

"If they show up here—" he says. 

"They" meaning R-75.

"Grenades," Sammy says simply. They all carry a few. Habit.

Cam smiles tightly. "That's my girl."

He and Teal'c leave.

"What's going on?" Chapman asks. Sammy goes to the front of the cave to keep watch, leaving Dani to babysit.

She hesitates. "Airman Walker wasn't at his post," she finally says. "Teal'c and Colonel Mitchell have gone to look for him."

Chapman smiles indulgently. "Perhaps the fellow just wandered off to relieve himself." (Oh, god. She wonders about the intelligence of bureaucrats. She really does.)

About half an hour later everything shakes. She runs to the mouth of the cave. Sammy is already on the radio to Cam. He's close enough to give her a report.

The Base self-destruct has triggered.

Which means the Stargate is now buried under about twelve floors of radioactive rubble. And—incidentally—so are the 302s.

The IOA does not take this well.

Shen is still silent. Chapman is edging closer to panic. LaPierre is looking for someone to blame. (At the top of his lungs.) Sammy points out he's alerting R-75 to their presence. (It finally shuts him up, but Dani knows it's only temporary.) Woolsey threatens them, yet again, with the recommendations that will appear in his final report, and points out that if they'd just been allowed to leave when _he_ wanted to leave, none of this would have happened.

"You mean, all those people wouldn't be dead?" Dani asks.

Woolsey glares at her.

"Or do you mean you'd be safe on Earth complaining about our incompetence again?" she goes on. Cam and Teal'c are out there somewhere. Are they all right? "Because, you know, when you come right down to it, _you're_ the one who wanted us out here with you rather than back on the Gamma Site fixing the problem. So I'd say any problems you're having right now are pretty much all your fault."

Woolsey looks like he's about to have a coronary. She and Sammy exchange looks of identical malice. Woolsey started out as Kinsey's hatchet-man and neither of them is going to forget that.

#

Cam and Teal'c get back, and Sammy tells them that with the 302s gone, they aren't only in trouble, they're in _real_ trouble. (She told Cam last night, of course. Dani's pretty sure. He doesn't look surprised now, anyway.) As soon as he lost contact with the Gamma Site, General Landry would have dispatched the _Odyssey_ in their direction. But it isn't coming to pick them up. The last message Colonel Pearson sent was about Myers being infected by R-75. Once General Landry couldn't dial in, he's got to assume Gamma Base has been destroyed. So (Sammy says) he'll order Protocol CR-91, meaning when _Odyssey_ arrives, they'll launch a payload to scrub the surface—probably a neurotoxin, Sammy thinks. Then the SGC will be able to send down people to begin salvage operations.

Of course, they'll all be dead then.

"They won't know we're here," Sammy says. "R-75 will mask our life signs. And our radios and personal transponders won't work because of atmospheric interference."

There's a lot of that here. It's one of the reasons they chose this site. It can't be scanned from space very well.

"We're going to die," Shen says quietly.

"Maybe not," Cam says. "Sam, when will _Odyssey_ get here?"

"If we assume the Gate was functional up until the self-destruct was triggered ... we have six hours," Sammy says quietly.

"Okay," Cam says. "All we need is a way to get a message to them in orbit."

"How?" Chapman demands. "You just said the Base has been destroyed!"

"Perhaps," Teal'c says. "But the research station has not."

"Sam? Think you can build us a ham radio?" Cam asks.

"I'll give it my best shot."

"Good enough for me. C'mon, guys, we're going for a little walk."

About five miles, if they can even find the damned place.

"But— But—we'll _die_ out there!" That's LaPierre.

"Of course we won't," Dani says coaxingly. This is her job, and it's time to do it. "We'll keep you safe. That's what we're here for. And _Odyssey_ has a ring-platform that will get us right off the surface as soon as Colonel Carter calls them. Now let's go so she has plenty of time to work on it, okay?"

They're definitely going to die.

#

For a bunch of bureaucrats terrified of dying, alien bugs, and dying (in about that order), the four members of the IOA don't seem to be all that interested in _moving their asses._ LaPierre wants to stop and rest every few minutes (and he's _thirsty_ but too bad; they drank the last of the water this morning), Woolsey wants to commiserate with him, and Chapman wants to cling to Teal'c. Shen is being reasonable about things, but she's limping.

But they get there. Finally.

Four hours to cover five miles.

They go inside and pool their remaining resources. Eight grenades. Only one clip left on each of the P90s. Three Berettas and a zat.

Sam gets to work on the radio.

#

"Hey, Sam, will this burn?" Cam asks.

Sammy looks up from what she's doing. "Industrial solvent. Sure."

"Great," he says.

There are carboys of the stuff here. Dani can't imagine what could need that much solving here. Cam and Teal'c take the containers outside. Dani concentrates on her job: keeping the delegates out from underfoot and away from Sammy.

She keeps telling them to _sit down and don't touch anything,_ but she can't be everywhere at once.

_"Ce qui est ceci?"_ LaPierre asks.

_"Pas—"_ But before she can get to him, he does, and an ear-splitting siren goes off. She knocks him out of the way and manages to silence it after a couple of seconds, which is at least a couple of seconds too many.

"What the _hell?_ " Cam demands, running inside.

"LaPierre decided to test the Emergency Warning Siren," Dani says, reading the nameplate.

"Congratulations, Mr. LaPierre, you've probably just killed all of us," Sammy says. She flips a switch. "Okay, it's transmitting. So whenever the _Odyssey_ shows up, it will know where to find our dead bodies."

"Sam," Cam says chidingly.

"I'm sorry," Dani says miserably. Her fault. LaPierre hasn't killed them. She has. She should have held a gun on them.

"Hey, maybe they're all sleeping it off somewhere," Cam says.

They aren't. R-75 shows up about ten minutes later. Not just the cluster they saw at the cave. A _wave._

Teal'c starts with the grenades, one at a time. It slows them down. The black mass flurries, vanishes into the earth, reappears.

"It was a really great Christmas present, Cam," she says quietly. Because she'd told him "thank you," and that she'd liked it, but she'd really like him to know _how much._ "Just about the best one ever, really." 

"Hey, good," he says. "You're really kinda hard to buy for." He's watching the bugs.

"Sammy tells me that," she says.

The grenades are gone.

"Fall back!" he shouts, and Teal'c retreats. Cam sprays the carboys set up at the edge of the clearing with bullets just as the bugs reach them. The liquid spreads and burns, and where it hasn't, the bugs seem to object to it anyway.

But they keep coming.

Now he and Teal'c are shooting at the ground. The bugs retreat, but every time he and Teal'c stop firing, they advance again. She draws her Beretta and fires as well.

Teal'c is out of ammo. He throws his P90 into the bugs and draws his zat. It stuns them, but they don't retreat. He fires again and again. The living advance over the dead.

Suddenly there are explosions—big ones—a lot of them—in a ring around the Research Station. The ground shakes violently.

The bugs vanish.

There's a tearing noise in the sky. She looks up.

302s.

The _Odyssey_ has arrived. And even better, Colonel Emerson knows they're down here.

The 302s continue to bomb the area, keeping it clear of bugs while a strike-team rings down. Three trips (the IOA goes first, SG-1 goes last) and everybody's safe.

"Welcome aboard, Shaft," Colonel Emerson says.

Teal'c raises an eyebrow.

"Call sign," Cam says hastily. " My old call-sign. Shaft. Cam ... shaft."

Teal'c doesn't look convinced, and Sammy is not-quite-snickering.

Dani's too tired to care.

#

They spend another four hours in orbit, long enough to thoroughly poison the Gamma Site. They're on the bridge, IOA and all, watching the bombardment. They've been fed, cleaned up, run through Medical, and are currently in ship's jump-suits. The toxin is nonpersistent, Colonel Emerson announces, which means in about three months, the _Odyssey_ can come back with a salvage team.

"Better send some chickens down first," Cam says. "You know, just to be sure. Because, man, those are _nasty_ little buggers."

"So to speak," Sammy says, and Cam grins at her.

"I have to admit," Woolsey says, "this has been an ... eye-opening experience."

"We're just glad we could get all you folks back safe and sound," Cam says.

"And you people do this all the time?" Mr. Chapman asks.

"Indeed we do not," Teal'c says repressively. "Our usual missions are of an exciting and stressful nature."

Dani takes a deep breath and Sammy coughs.

#

"I'm sorry," she says again, when they're back at the SGC and they've (finally) gotten rid of the IOA. "Cam, it was my fault LaPierre triggered that siren."

She's down in his office. It's very neat. She bets he reads all his memos.

"Seems to me it's more LaPierre's fault," Cam says.

She makes an aggrieved noise. "We all knew he was an idiot. I was supposed to be watching them and keeping them out of trouble."

Cam nods. "Well, what _were_ you doing?"

"Well, uh, Chapman was edging toward the door—he kept wanting to go outside—and Woolsey kept trying to talk to Sammy and get her to tell him everything was going to be okay, and she couldn't listen to him and work—"

"Sounds like maybe I should'a sent Teal'c back in there with the zat."

"You aren't listening!"

"You tell him in French?"

She blinks. "What?"

"LaPierre's French. So... did you tell him in French to sit down and shut up while the four of us were trying to save his ass? Because, you know, maybe it was one of those communications barriers."

"Of _course_ I told him in French! Do you think either he or Shen was capable of understanding English by that point?"

"And English?"

"I told Chapman and Woolsey in English. So yes, Cam. English, Mandarin and French. "Sit down" and "shut up" and "don't touch anything." And it's still my fault."

He nods again. "Yeah, okay. But you know, thinking about it, I can't really see where you screwed up. If Chapman'd got out, he'd'a brought the bugs down on us, too. If you hadn't sat on Woolsey and kept him out of Sam's hair, we'd _all_ be dead. So I guess there's only one thing to do here."

"What's that?" she asks warily.

He grins at her. "Next time, baby, you gotta shoot 'em."

"Fine," she says irritably. If he won't see reason, she can't make him.

"Good," Cam says. "Now. I figure this weekend we all go ice-skating. I talked to Teal'c, and would you believe it, the man has never been? There's even a rink downtown where we can rent skates. What do you think?"

She gestures in the direction of her office. "Work."

"Sure, sure," Cam says. "Talk to you later."

She gets out of there as quickly as she can, but she has a terrible feeling she's going to be going ice-skating this weekend.

She supposes it won't be horrible.

Teal'c on skates.

#

Teal'c, unfortunately, is naturally graceful, and both Sammy and Cassie have skated before. Cam played enough hockey in college to decide he didn't like it, and more than enough to learn to skate.

She's the only one who can't stay upright on a pair of knives. She's been trying for half an hour. No luck.

"How long do I have to do this before you _give up?_ " she demands, clinging to the wall at the edge of the rink.

Oh, god. Bad choice of words. She already knows that "give up" and "Cam" in the same sentence is a bad match.

He laughs and tries to pry her hand loose from the wall. "C'mon, Dani."

She clings harder. "I'm tired of falling down!"

"Once around the rink."

"Oh, god, are you looking for occasions for my public humiliation?"

"Come on. I won't let you fall."

She continues to fix her gaze at a point at the top of the bleachers.

"Make you a deal. Next time you fall, you get off the ice. No questions asked."

There are mirrors up near the ceiling. She can see that Sammy and Cassie are chasing each other around the ice. Teal'c is gliding magisterially along.

"That will take about two minutes," she mutters. If that.

"Great. Then the sooner you let go of that wall, the sooner you can go and sit down."

She doesn't let go. He pries her hands loose. But he doesn't let go of them. He turns her around and starts skating backwards, holding her hands.

She's gliding.

She isn't doing anything. He's just pulling her around the ice. But her knees and ankles aren't buckling and she's not falling off the blades to one side or the other.

"The secret's in the momentum," Cam says. "If you're moving forward, it's harder to fall."

"Like flying?" she suggests, because it sounds like that.

He grins at her. "Exactly like that."

And then he speeds up, and tugs, and _lets go,_ and she's sailing, all alone, across the ice for a few brief seconds. It can't last, of course, and she starts to wobble, but now he's behind her, pushing her forward instead of pulling her. 

"I was supposed to fall down now," she says.

"Can't have that," Cam says.

He skates her in a wide circle around the rink, one arm around her shoulders, and she's clutching his other arm and she doesn't even care what they look like because most of her attention is still on _not falling_ (though some of it, admittedly, is on the fact this could be, almost, _fun_ if no one was watching and she could actually do it)—Sammy and Cassie turn and see them, and oh, god, Sammy's _applauding_ —before he finally skates them back to their starting point and lets her clamber up into the seats. He skates away, and she quickly unlaces her skates before anybody can drag her out onto the ice again.

Not doing that again any time soon.

Not.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the actual rape/noncon as opposed to the implied rape/noncon, which comes later.


	3. CHAPTER THREE: JANUARY 2006—APRIL 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst. Lots of angst. Sooooo much angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the endnotes.

January is also the month in which she ends up accidentally spending the night at Cam's.

It's Team Night (Cam won the draw, and picked an all-bug program: _Starship Troopers, Mimic_ , and _Tremors._ Dani thinks he probably paid off Teal'c, who picked Sci-Fi as the theme).

_Starship Troopers_ is incredibly stupid. Sammy is wildly indignant, and keeps talking about some book that the movie is nothing like. Cam laughs. They throw popcorn at each other, because Dani brought him a popcorn maker this time: she can't cook, and he won't let something "store bought" (as he calls it) into his kitchen, and she's already stocked his liquor cabinet.

After the pie (something called Black Satin, meaning _chocolate_ ) slathered in mounds of real whipped cream, they go back for the other two movies, and, well, she doesn't remember a lot after that. 

She's taken care to sit at Teal'c's end of the couch, this time. Out of reach. But she's sitting on the floor, because it's more comfortable to be able to stretch out (chronically short of sleep, and while her days, when they're offworld, aren't exactly twenty-four hours long, there still aren't enough hours in them). And the next thing she knows, she's opening her eyes, trying to process the fact that she isn't leaning, she's lying, and there's a pillow under her head and she's wrapped up in a couple of layers of blankets.

It's morning.

She gropes around until she finds her glasses and sits up. She's covered in the afghan from the couch ( _"Don't you all make fun of my gran'ma's afghan,"_ she hears Cam's voice warn in her head) and his USC Stadium blanket. She struggles free. Where the hell are her _boots?_

"Morning," comes a voice from the couch.

And she looks up and Cam is sitting on the end of the couch. He's been sitting there. Watching her sleep?

And he picks up a mug from the end-table and leans over and takes her hand and wraps it around it and it's _coffee._

Hot. Good. She gulps it down without stopping.

"You know," he says, "I'm thinking you probably aren't getting enough sleep."

She checks her watch. It's _nine o'clock in the morning._ She waves her hand in the air. Plenty of sleep. He's seen. She's just slept right now.

And he takes the mug back and gets to his feet.

She finds her boots. Unfair of Sammy. Must have been Sammy. She's going to have words with her. Leaving her here alone at Cam's last night.

She finds her backpack and is opening the closet for her coat when Cam comes back out of the kitchen with the mug again. "You aren't leaving?" he asks. Sounding surprised and disappointed and she has no intention of listening right now.

"Work." She has the backpack in one hand and the closet doorknob in the other, and there's some complicated procedure you're supposed to follow to get the coat out of the closet and on and the backpack on too, and she'll remember it in a minute...

He takes the backpack out of her hand and replaces it with the mug. "Breakfast'll just take a minute," he says enticingly. "I've been promising you one of my breakfasts for a long time."

_Promise forever._ The second cup of coffee's a little too hot, but she gulps it down anyway. "I'll get something on the way," she says. She hands him the cup, and by then she's figured out the closet door. Coffee. Better than a sarcophagus.

Cam sighs. "You really will? You aren't just going to go home and eat cookies?"

_I will if I want to._ "I'll stop at the diner," she says, shrugging into her coat as she juggles the empty mug. "Satisfied?"

"Not as much as if you'd let me make you a decent breakfast." She glares at him balefully. He takes the mug back again. "But I guess it's what I'm gonna get."

"Learn to live with it."

He grins at her. "For now."

She swings her backpack over her shoulder—barely avoiding hitting him with it—and goes out the door.

January is so damned cold here.

#

She debates—over the course of the entire drive—whether to actually stop or not. She doesn't have to. He doesn't get to order her around _here._ The fate of the Galaxy doesn't depend on whether or not she eats breakfast on a Saturday morning.

However she's sure he's sure she said she would and she won't, so she does. But she only has coffee and a muffin, so she's ahead on points.

#

In February they go fucking native for two weeks. It would have been forever if Teal'c hadn't run out of tretonin and her antihistamines hadn't worn off, which makes both of them sick enough to shake off the psychotropic effects of the local virus-and-pollen combination. Neither is the active agent alone, which is why the preliminary tox scans from the MALP don't pick it up. But after the Eloi breathe on them (Cam names them afterward; they never do find out what the natives of 694 call themselves) and they go walking through one of the local fields, they're kind of doomed.

When they miss their third check-in, the SGC sends search teams looking for them. The Eloi are very good at hiding (it took them eight hours to make first contact, and they only persisted because they _knew_ —from the MALP footage—they were there). So are they.

(Later, she'll find out that Sally and a virologist named Lam General Landry consults theorize that while the cocktail in their blood destroys short-term memory and sense of identity _completely,_ it doesn't affect skills.) 

So for two weeks the four of them regress to the state of the early hominids (creatures even more primitive than the pseudo-Cro-Magnons of the Land of Light). Based on her guesses, MALP footage, and the UAV overflight (finds tracks, doesn't find them), they spend their time wandering with the Eloi in a wide radius around the Stargate, living off roots and berries and scattering like mice at any hint of pursuit or intruders. She has no idea of where the Eloi vanish to or where they sleep, but wherever it is, it's sufficiently hidden to baffle search parties.

Teal'c's the first to shake off the effects of the cocktail, and that's because he's _dying._ He's tough, though, tough enough to get her attention and keep it, and her pack and her vest are gone (also her weapons, weapons belt, canteen…), but she digs through her pockets (pants pockets; she's down to t-shirt, pants, and boots) and finds her emergency antihistamine pills and some caffeine pills. She gets to a stream and takes them _all._

Her head is ringing once the pills hit and she's nauseated and even with the antihistamines she can't breathe (or see very well: no glasses). The air is golden with pollen, and she has a vague idea the pollen is the problem. A problem. That there _is_ a problem.

At least Sammy and Cam _know_ her. They're both smiling and happy and nonverbal and want to pet her and nuzzle her—and having Sammy croon at her and lick her face is disturbing on so many levels—but they're willing to go where they're led.

And, thank god, she's still got her GDO.

They're supposed to wear them strapped to their arms, and everybody's supposed to wear one. But Sammy (or Cam, these days) almost always is the one who sends the code after she's dialed, and the GDO always gets in her way, so over the years she's gotten in the habit of wearing hers on her ankle. She can get to it nearly as fast, and she isn't always bumping it. So she's still got hers, when they've all lost just about everything else they came through the Gate with, from wristwatches to dog-tags to gear to half their clothes.

It takes them a long time to get back to the Gate. She's having her first asthma attack in more than twenty years, Teal'c keeps falling down, and the other two keep trying to wander off. Attention span of a _goldfish._

She dials, and sends her IDC—she's trying to cough, and trying to breathe, and not managing either one really well. Teal'c's on his knees, gripping one of the others in each hand (even dying he's strong enough to keep them from bolting at the kawhoosh, and when they can't run, they start _wailing_ ), and she's thinking she and Teal'c are going to _die,_ right here in front of the Gate, because she has no idea how long they've been here but maybe General Landry has locked out her code…

And finally her GDO goes green.

And she grabs them—oh, god, they don't want to walk into the Event Horizon—and Teal'c makes the supreme effort of his life and gets to his feet and the two of them drag Sammy and Cam through. And she can't _breathe,_ can't _talk,_ but she can make the "lock it up" signal in time for Walter to close the iris, and Cam and Sammy rush back up the ramp, slapping at it and _whining._

And Teal'c goes down.

But then they're all in the Infirmary—filthy and emaciated and she doesn't even want to think about the condition of her feet after wearing her boots nonstop for two weeks (it's been two weeks; General Landry said so)—but home. Alive. Going to be okay.

And an hour later all four of them are lying in their beds—Cam and Sammy are sedated, but they were actually starting to come out of it by the time they got down here, and Teal'c's been shot full of _tretonin_ and Sally says they got to him in time, and she's thinking of getting out of the breathing tent and explaining to Sally that she really doesn't need to be here, when SG-2 comes in on their way to pre- or post-, talking among themselves. 

"--back in time for the memorial; that's lucky--" Sands says as they pass.

Who's back? And what memorial?

It's probably a memorial service for them (it'll be Cam's first, too; he'll appreciate that) but she asks Sally anyway.

"Sally, is somebody dead?"

"Dani, what are you doing out of bed?"

"I'm fine." Okay, her feet are covered in bandages and open sores and swollen as hell but right now they don't hurt that much. She wonders why she didn't take her boots off on 694. Did the Alien Influence block pain? Or was her brain just too scrambled for her to notice she was _in_ pain? You don't notice pain when you're high, and oh, god, does she ever remember that.

Normally Sally would roll her eyes and threaten to strap Dani to the bed. Not today.

"Dani, get back into that bed and under that tent. And you need those IVs."

"I need food and coffee."

"You need seventy-two hours of observation. In another three hours you can have soup and Jell-O. No coffee."

She sighs. No possibility of argument here, but when Cam wakes up, he can probably sweet-talk one of the nurses into coffee. Dani wonders if Dorrie is going to be on graveyard. She's pretty sure there's no reason she can't have coffee.

"I heard Lieutenant Sands talking about a memorial service. Did we miss something? Or is it for us?"

Sally looks guilty and wary. "You'll have to talk to General Landry about that."

That's disturbing.

So is the fact General Landry comes down to see them (next day; antibiotics and antihistamines have knocked the Eloi-cocktail out of Sammy and Cam, and they're just fine. And boy, is Teal'c pissed about succumbing to a combination of a poison and a disease. In the old days, he would have been immune). (She didn't get a chance to ask about coffee on graveyard, though. She actually slept straight through.)

First the General delivers the Usual General Speech: glad you're back with us, SG-1, looking forward to the debriefing. But then he goes over to Cam's bed—he's on the end—and leans over him, saying something in his ear none of the rest of them can hear.

Cam looks at her, and his face is grim, and for one horrified moment all she can think is he's being reassigned, and that isn't fair, 694 wasn't his fault; it's only one mission; General Landry has to give him another chance--

Then Cam looks at Sammy, and now Sammy's looking at her too, and Sammy looks so worried, and Dani's sure that has to be what it is; Woolsey's gotten time to get his report in and it was bad; but General Landry's moving to stand at the foot of all of their beds.

"SG-1," he says. "Dr. Jackson, Colonel Carter, Teal'c. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. As you know, for almost two years now, Colonel O'Neill has been in stasis in Antarctica. Four days ago, I received word the containment chamber had failed. He died without regaining consciousness."

No.

"Jack and I go back a long way," General Landry is saying. "I think he'd be proud of the legacy he's left behind him. This place. And all of you. He was a good man."

"Yes, sir," Cam says. "I'm sorry I never got to know him personally."

There's silence, and she knows she has to say something to break it. "The memorial service?"

"I've postponed it so that all of you will be able to attend. Dr. Jackson, I think it would be fitting if you gave the eulogy."

"Yes, General. I'd be happy to," she says levelly.

"Then that's all. I'm sorry to hit you with this news before you're even out of bed, but I didn't want you to hear it from anyone else."

"Thank you, sir," Sammy says.

General Landry nods and leaves. There's a moment of silence.

"Dani, if you want--" Sammy says.

"No. I knew him longest," she answers. 

She can barely hear her own words over the screaming in her head.

#

The memorial service is in three days. They're out of the Infirmary in two. Plenty to do. Debrief (none of them remembers a lot, and she's lost her pack, her notes, her camera. They're undoubtedly somewhere on 694, and maybe even worth looking for, if they wear hazmat gear. Though it's also possible they're immune now to the Eloi Virus, but why take chances?) Sum up a man's life.

The body will be flown home when weather conditions permit. There will be a thorough autopsy as they try to discover all they can about the changes the Ancient device made to his body and brain. Sara has already been notified, Dani imagines; ex-wife, but the closest thing Jack has left to next-of-kin. He'll be buried next to Charlie when the time comes.

She'll have to move again. Now that he's actually, finally, really dead, the will can be read, all of his legacies bestowed.

There will be a wake. He held one for her. It's only fair.

She's working on the eulogy. Cam, Teal'c, Sammy ... they've all been ... _hovering_ ... since they got the news. She fled to her office to escape. The service is tomorrow. She's got Jack's service record up on the computer. Not really helpful. A list of dates and commissions and postings and _Classified, Classified, Classified..._

"You don't have to go through this alone."

Cam comes into her office. 

"I'm not alone."

He comes up behind her and begins to rub her shoulders.

"Baby, I know what you're going through."

How can he?

"Cameron, I am _not_ your _'baby.'_ "

"Are. Always will be."

"No. Stop it."

He stops rubbing her shoulders, but his hands don't move.

"Figuring out what to say. That's tough," he says.

"He said I made this place happen. He said I was its conscience. It wasn't me. It was him. He ... we wouldn't _be_ here if not for him! _Earth_ wouldn't be here! It's ... this is a military program, you know, and ... he got me on SG-1. General Hammond didn't want me to have a field position, but he talked him into it. He saved Teal'c from the NID. When General Hammond resigned and we got General Bauer and he split us all up, I don't know what he did, but General Hammond came back. He found out Colonel Makepeace was a mole. He contacted the Asgard for the first time--"

The Asgard didn't come back to save him.

"You should say that. Well, maybe except for the part about General Hammond. Probably nobody needs to know that."

Probably nobody needs to know a lot of the things they did over the years.

He's still touching her.

"You need to leave me alone," she says.

"Now, you know that ain't gonna happen," Cam says reasonably.

"I hate you," she suggests. It would be nice to be sure of what she's feeling right now, because she doesn't want to admit she's feeling relief as much as grief. It's over, and she feels as if she's put her foot on a step that isn't there.

"Well, then, that's a cross I just gotta bear," Cam says. "But it won't change anything, so you just go ahead."

#

She stands with SG-1 in the Gate Room as the color-guard folds the flag. The Gate Room is full. General Landry recalled all the Teams he could so they could be here for this. They hand it to Cam. She's already spoken her piece. Her eyes are dry. Crying girls don't go anywhere. Not with their grandfathers. Not through the Stargate.

She's summed up his life and death as well as she can. The last words he spoke still echo in her mind. _"Goodbye, beloved friends."_ She's haunted by the fear she hasn't translated them right; her grasp of Ancient is more than a little shaky. She's certain he was saying "Goodbye," but the nuances of the second word escape her. Comrades? Companions? Dear ones? She's never going to be quite sure. In Latin, "Amo" is the root-word for "Love," but the meaning probably changes in Ancient. "Loved ones?"

The honor guard plays "Taps.'

Done. Over and done.

Ten years over and done.

The color guard files out, and General Landry dismisses the brigade. Cam hands her the flag. She guesses she needs to buy a case for it if she's going to be the one to keep it. Or is she supposed to pass it to Sara O'Neill? Maybe Graham knows.

"You okay?" Cam asks.

She nods shortly. "I'd better get to the house. People are going to be coming soon."

Sammy's looking as if she's being strangled, and Dani knows she'll be crying soon. Crying would be a nice idea. But not at a wake.

"Sammy?" she asks.

Sammy nods. "I've just got to get changed, and, and pick up Cassie, and--"

"Cam can go with you," Dani says. Sammy shouldn't be alone. "C'mon, Teal'c."

#

Sam watches the two of them leave.

She doesn't know how she got through the memorial service.

She realizes she and Cam are the last ones standing in the Gate Room. Airmen are hovering, hesitantly. It's time to take down the podium and the decorations— _decorations!_ —from the service. Because Life goes on. No matter what horrors and disasters happen, Life goes on.

"I need to get some things from my lab," she says. She needs to _burn_ some things in her lab. But there's no point.

Cam walks her up to 18 in silence. They go inside.

"C'mere, Sam," he says, holding out his arms. "You were brave all morning and you're gonna have to be brave later, but you don't have to be brave right now."

He doesn't know the half of it.

But she goes to him and lays her head on his shoulder and cries while he holds her. Because nothing about their lives is fair. And couldn't they have dodged one last fucking bullet?

Or two.

He strokes her hair and makes soothing noises and after a few minutes she straightens up and dabs carefully under her eyes. Not too bad, she thinks, inspecting the Kleenex. Thank God for waterproof mascara.

Then she blows her nose and takes a deep breath.

"They unplugged him," she says.

She sees Cam's face go slack with shock, because he thought she was crying because Colonel O'Neill was dead, and she _was,_ but oh, God, he's been in stasis for nearly two years now, and she's had time to get used to that and the fact that, well, the prognosis wasn't good. She moves over to her desk and stares down at her computer. Treacherous lying vicious piece of junk.

"The report came through this morning," she says evenly. "They ... it was nobody's fault, really. About two weeks ago a big quake hit the Outpost. They've been doing a lot of excavating down there, trying to expose the entire structure, and ... they lost power. Half the tunnels collapsed. Two of their generators were destroyed."

"But they had backups, right?" Cam asks.

Sam smiles tightly, not looking at him. "Sure. Most of the fuel for them was in the collapsed sections of tunnel. They'd been running off a solar grid when the weather was good, but they didn't know if they were still connected. They didn't have any electrical power. A storm had knocked out their communications. It was getting pretty damned cold down there."

"So the only thing left was..."

"The _naquaadah_ generator hooked up to the Ancient stasis pod."

There's a moment of silence.

"It's pretty powerful," Sam continues, determined to tell it all. "They were able to bring everything back-on line. Get a message through to McMurdo. They lost two of the scientists in the initial cave-ins, but the other twenty members of the expedition are going to be fine until the rescue-team can dig down to them and get them out. They didn't even lose any of their data. But..." She shakes her head. 

Dr. Takahashi said the stasis pod simply went dark the moment the _naquaadah_ generator was unhooked. It was near -26C in the chamber, but Dr. Brooks, who'd stayed to monitor Colonel O'Neill—not that there was a lot she could really do; she's a medical doctor—said the pseudo-ice began dissolving almost immediately. He was dead by the time the chamber was clear. They'd tried to revive him. _"You're not dead until you're warm and dead."_ That's the rule in cold-climate survival. But it was too late.

"When are you going to tell her?" Cam asks, and she turns around and just stares at him.

"I can't tell her. Ever."

Tell Dani the stasis pod didn't just malfunction, that the IOA-sponsored expedition to the Antarctic Outpost _disconnected the generator?_ That Colonel O'Neill is dead before they could figure out a way to save him because of _that?_

God, so stupid. So pointless.

Cam regards her with sympathy, but he's shaking his head. "She's going to have to know," he says, and Sam knows there's no arguing with that tone. "Better she hears it from a friend."

She shakes her head again. Not disagreeing, but how can she do this? Dani's been coping—they all have. More than coping, now that Cam's joined them. Dani was actually starting to tease him a little.

"After the wake," she says.

#

She knows how to run a wake. She's attended enough of them and helped to run more than she can count. You bring in enormous amounts of food and liquor and you throw a great big party to celebrate the fact _you're still alive._

And to send the guest of honor off with joy. To ... wherever. Jack was Irish and Catholic (nominally, sort of) and his grandfather was Lutheran and at the end he was more Ancient than not. She doesn't believe in Heaven or a mystical afterlife, but she still wonders which one he'd go to if he were going.

There's no one here who didn't know him, at least slightly. Even General Hammond is here; he came from Washington to attend the service. She wonders if he'll go to Jack's next funeral too. She wonders who will be there that isn't here. It's fitting, she supposes, for a man who cheated Death in so many ways—who actually died and came back to life—that he have two funerals. 

This is the one that counts, though.

Some people stay only long enough to pay their respects; a courtesy visit. Some stay an hour or two. The four of them circulate, playing host. SG-1. The three survivors of Jack's old team and its new leader. He would have liked Cam a lot, she thinks. She imagines them meeting. Cam would be nervous (of course); Jack a little distant at first (but only at first), taking his measure. And then he'd say something to put Cam at his ease, and let him know he was ... accepted.

_We're in good hands, Jack._

It's the only reason she'd like to believe in an Afterlife. She'd like to tell him that. He always worried about them so much. About her, and Sammy, and Teal'c. Sammy because the science got in the way of the people sometimes. Teal'c because Teal'c still doesn't completely understand Earth, and even when he does, he ignores the parts he doesn't like. Her ... well, she can't really say why he worried about her. She just knows he did.

All done now.

It's a wake, so stories are told. Scurrilous, funny, not-quite true. How something looks depends on your point of view, after all.

"--had him locked up in Security Isolation for four hours before he could convince General Hammond he was the real deal, and--"

"--and oh, there's this time he's laying down the law to the Snakeskinners, only—get this—he's _fifteen_ , and--"

"--so he cuts his arm open in the Infirmary, and it's full of _wires_ , and--"

She moves on. Her own memories of Jack are of things that never quite made it into their Mission Reports. The details of their first trip to Antarctica. Life as memory-stamped laborers in underground caverns. 

Abydos.

Seven years of SG-1, and things said and unsaid. She drinks coffee, and smiles, and makes sure everything runs smoothly. It's her job. There's laughter, and that's good. It's a wake, after all.

A celebration.

#

When it gets dark, she lights the fire in the fireplace, and thinks of her first night back from Abydos. He brought her here, and lit a fire. It's down to Jack's friends from the Teams, now, people she knows well. The stories become more personal, more real. He recruited or recommended nearly all of them; it was one of his jobs.

"Everybody's number is up sometime," Major Carmichael says. "But I gotta hand it to Jack. He paid one hell of a Ferryman's Fee."

They all raise their glasses in a toast. She raises her coffee cup.

"S'matter with you, Doc? You not drinking tonight? Somebody get the Doc a drink," Carmichael says.

Not really politic to argue, and it will be her first of the night. "I'll get it," she says.

She goes to the kitchen and comes back with a bottle and a tray of clean glasses. There are plenty; she knows how to supply for a wake. "If we're going to toast him, we should use this," she says.

It's a bottle of Laphroaig 30-year-old. She's been saving it. She pours, and the glasses are handed around. Only Teal'c doesn't take one, but he's fasting. It's the Jaffa custom to honor the dead.

"You want to give the toast?" Carmichael asks.

She stands in front of the fireplace and raises her glass. "To Jack O'Neill," she says. There's really nothing more to say.

Another round kills the bottle, and half an hour after that, after coffee and sorting out who should drive and who shouldn't, it's down to the four of them and Cassie. Hard to say how Cassie's taking the news her Uncle Jack hasn't really been dead for the past two years, but he's dead now. She looks more stunned than anything, the way she did when she first came from Hanka.

Dani's bracing herself for a fight, because she knows at least Sammy is going to want to stay with her tonight, which really isn't fair, as they've all known about this for four days, and it's not as if tonight is going to be worse than the others. She spent last night here alone, after all.

But what happens is Teal'c says he'll drive Cassie home and stay with her, and Sammy gives him the keys to the Volvo and says she'll catch a ride with Cam, and then it's just the three of them. And she's not sure what's going on, but she knows _something_ is, so she moves around the living room cleaning up. The caterers will be back tomorrow to take away the buffet tables and the coffee urns, but the rest of the clutter is distracting. She manages three trips to the kitchen before Sammy catches up with her.

"Dani. Come here. Sit down."

So she does. On the couch, Sammy on one side, Cam on the other. He puts a glass in her hand. More Scotch, and it's pretty full. "Drink up," he says.

"Why?" she asks.

"We need to talk to you," he says, and her hand tightens on the glass until her knuckles go white, because she just can't bear to hear what his voice tells her he's going to say. Whatever it is. She knows it's something bad.

"Drink," he says again, and she knows he won't start talking until she does, so she raises the glass and sips. It's the other Laphroaig, the one Sammy got her for Christmas. Not quite as stellar as the 30, but more than adequate.

And then Sammy's talking about the Ancient stasis pod, and about how—last year—it was failing, but they fixed it with a _naquaadah_ generator and it was fine, only there was an accident at the Ancient Outpost and it was the only available source of power...

And she hears glass shatter.

She's up off the couch and ordering both of them out of her house. Sammy looks stricken, and Cam just looks grim. He gets up, but not to leave. He moves toward her, and all she can think of is _something to hit_ , but he wrestles her into a bear-hug as she struggles and kicks and screams. 

_"--murdered him!"_ He didn't die because the pod failed. _"They murdered him!"_ She curses and fights, straining against him—but he won't let go—until finally she's so exhausted she just lies against his chest, quivering with tension. "Why--" _Why didn't you stop them? Why didn't you do something?_

"There were twenty people still alive down there after the cave-in," Cam says quietly, stroking her hair. "Using the generator saved their lives, but it killed him. If he'd been able to make the decision himself, you know what he would have done."

She does, and she can't bear it. It's too much, knowing he's dead and now knowing _how_ he died, _why_ he died, and she's not strong enough any more to pretend this is just another in a series of acceptable losses, a final necessary sacrifice, so she just cries. Cam holds her and rocks her and Sammy puts her arms around her too, and after a long time Dani realizes she's just lying on Cam's chest, with her cheek pillowed against his damp shirt, breathing raggedly, and he's resting his cheek on her head. She's cried out all her tears, and she feels limp and unsteady.

And Sammy moves away and Cam sits down on the couch with her and hands her the box of Kleenex, and she wipes off her face, and blows her nose several times, then wipes off her glasses and rubs her eyes. They're swollen and hot and they ache.

And what she knows still burns, like a live coal in the pit of her stomach: they killed him. And it isn't fair, it isn't _right..._

"Sorry," she mumbles.

"S'okay," Cam says. "I figured you were about due."

There's glass all over the hearth, and she smells Scotch. "I threw the glass," she says, half-guessing.

"Yeah," Cam says. "Pretty good aim."

Sammy comes back with fresh glasses, and this time she pours them all a drink. Her eyes are red, too.

"Sorry," Dani says again. Sammy smiles just a bit. "When did you...?"

"I found out this morning," Sammy says.

Dani feels her eyes prickle with fresh tears. She sips her Scotch. Her throat is raw, and the alcohol burns. "Sorry," she says. She doesn't seem to be able to stop saying it.

"They tried everything they could think of," Sammy says. 

Before they did what they did, she knows Sammy means. She drinks more Scotch. "Sorry," she repeats. And Cam's right. Twenty lives for one. Jack would have made that choice. One military life for twenty civilian lives. His job. He sacrificed himself for her in the first place when he took the download on 439. It's just over now. "His choice," she whispers, and feels fresh tears trickle down her cheeks.

She's so tired.

Cam eases her glasses off and sets them on the table. It's okay. She doesn't need to see right now. She's tired of seeing. Seeing choices and necessity and endings.

They keep her glass full.

A while later, she realizes she's talking. She's not sure when she started, or why, in fact, she's telling this story. It's an old story, after all.

"--so this goddamned brushcut comes waltzing up to me when I haven't even been on the fucking base for an hour and says la-di-dah, everything's now _classified_ and I can whistle for what I need to translate the fucking goddamned Coverstone. Oh, that was just _peachy_. And two weeks later we're all on Abydos—and I'm his _second_ choice, you understand—and okay, I lied about definitely being able to get them back, but he didn't have to be so fucking pissy about it--"

And Sammy just giggles—oh, god, they're both drunk—and reminds her about their mission to Simarka, so she has to retaliate with the mead story, which leads to all the details about the Argos Mission that they somehow forgot to mention, which somehow leads to time-loops, time-travel, parallel universes, and (somehow) Urgo.

"--and we kept going through the Gate and winding up back at the SGC!" Sammy says. Which they sort of did and sort of didn't, although they don't to this day know what actually happened.

"Oh, god, was Jack pissed," Dani says reminiscently.

_Goodbye, Jack._

#

She doesn't remember the details of how or where or when the night ends, but she wakes up in the morning in her own bed—Jack's bed—stripped to her underwear and just about as hung-over as she's ever been in her life. Thank god they're all still on Medical Exemption. And on leave.

It takes her at least ten minutes to be able to organize herself enough to move. She staggers into the bathroom—dizzy, nauseated—and sluices her face in icy water. When she finally peers into the mirror, it hasn't helped much. Her eyes are red and swollen, and there are dark circles under them.

She finds the aspirin and takes four. She's horribly thirsty—dehydrated, and she vaguely remembers Sally said something about no coffee or alcohol for at least a week—but the water makes her stomach want to revolt. She refuses to let it, and drinks a second glass.

Shower.

When she comes out of the shower, she feels a little better, and at least she's clean. She dresses slowly and carefully, fumbling her way unsteadily into her clothes: t-shirt, thermal shirt, flannel shirt, chinos. She hunts around until she finds her glasses—on the dresser, not where she usually leaves them—stuffs her feet into a pair of sheepskin slippers, and goes out to see who else is in the house.

Cam and Sammy are sitting in her kitchen drinking coffee. The dishwasher is chugging along quietly in the background.

"Morning," she says.

"Barely," Sammy answers. Dani glances at the wall clock. It's almost noon.

"We were going to wake you up soon," Cam says. "You've got that appointment today."

She remembers. She's going to see Jack's lawyer. The will.

"Sit down," Cam says, getting up.

She does, and he brings her a cup of coffee and a tall glass of something red.

"Hangover cure," he says. "Drink it fast."

She hesitates. "It's got alcohol in it?" Most of the ones she knows do, and she doesn't want to go to the lawyer's drunk.

"Shot of vodka," Cam admits. "Believe me, hair of the dog is the only thing gonna make you feel better. Sam'll drive you."

She nods, and gulps it down. It's bitter and the spices in it sear her mouth and throat, and when it hits her stomach there's a moment of blinding nausea and she breaks out in a cold sweat. But the moment passes, and she _does_ feel better. She reaches for her coffee.

"Where did I get the ingredients for a hangover cure?" she asks.

"Ran a few errands while you were sleeping," Cam says. "Sam let the caterers in."

Oh, god, they were scheduled to come at ten. "Thanks," she says. "I guess I pretty much made an idiot of myself last night, right?"

_"Dani,"_ Sammy says. Worry and love and affectionate exasperation.

"Nope," Cam says. "Think you could handle some toast?"

"Dry," she says, shuddering. "Burned."

"Coming up."

#

They both go with her to the lawyer. Dress Blues. She wears one of her funeral suits. She's iced her face and her eyes, and even let Sammy apply some powder, but the swollen redness still shows.

She's always known she was Jack's executor. First in a series of --descending? --ascending? possibilities, depending on who survived him. Considering everything, it had probably been a fairly long list.

The lawyer is military, of course. Offices on the Academy grounds. She sits in his office while he explains her duties to her. They sound extraordinarily complex and time-consuming, even though Jack kept his financials organized and up-to-date, and Colonel Fleming suggests his office can handle the legal details of settling the estate for her, especially since she's one of the principal beneficiaries.

She just stares at him.

"You didn't know the contents of Colonel O'Neill's will, Dr. Jackson?" Colonel Fleming asks, after a moment.

"No," she says. "Why should I?"

He looks uncomfortable. "I'd just assumed..."

He passes the document across the desk. The language is formal, but she helped to negotiate the Protected Planets Treaty. It's not hard to figure out.

Jack left her his house. All his things.

And oh god, a lot of money.

There's money here for Cassie and for Sara, for Tessa and Kayla Hammond, for a few names she doesn't recognize, for the Air Force Aid Society. The cabin in Minnesota goes to a name she doesn't know: a relative? she wonders. She didn't think Jack had any left. But everything else goes to her. If she's dead, Cassie's the next beneficiary.

"Uh," she says.

"He also left what we call a Letter of Intent, indicating his wishes to the executor regarding certain other bequests. It isn't a legally-binding document, of course, but it indicates Colonel O'Neill's wishes with regard to the disbursement of his estate."

"Of course I'll do what he wants." She realizes she's said something wrong from the expression on Colonel Fleming's face, and plays back her words in her head. "Wanted," she amends.

Colonel Fleming passes a thick Manila envelope across the desk. The words "Letter of Intent" are typed on the front. "Technically, you should refrain from executing any of the provisions in the Letter of Intent until the conclusion of probate, but I don't really see any problem with you proceeding immediately, providing you exercise sound judgment."

"I understand, Colonel." He's saying she can give away Jack's things.

"There are also some personal letters. For you, for Colonel Carter, and for a T. Murray."

"I'll deliver Mr. Murray's letter to him."

Three more envelopes. She takes two, Sam takes one. It says "Major Sam Carter" on the front. Jack never knew about her promotion.

"That should be everything for the time being, Dr. Jackson. Just see my secretary so we can get the paperwork started."

She puts the copy of the will and the three letters into her briefcase. From the lawyer's they drive to Sammy's house; that's where Sammy's car is.

"How is she?" Sammy asks, as they come in. Teal'c's in the living room, Cassie's nowhere in sight.

Dani thinks Teal'c would shrug if he weren't a Jaffa. "She has not chosen to confide in me," he says. "Are you well, Danielle Jackson?"

"Peachy." She wonders if Teal'c knows how Jack died. If not, they'll have to tell him. But not right now. Please. "Got drunk. Broke some glasses. Pretty much a typical _Tau'ri_ wake."

"It is not a sign of weakness to grieve for the loss of a friend," Teal'c says.

"I know," she says. But it's been so long, living with uncertain hope, and now this, and she's exhausted, devastated, glad it's over, hating herself for feeling that way. "He left you a letter." She digs in her briefcase and offers it to him. Teal'c takes it solemnly.

"I'm ... sort of ... going to ... go. Do you need a ride back to Base?"

Teal'c inclines his head gravely.

"You aren't going?" Sammy says, coming back from Cassie's room. Dani hasn't taken off her coat, and Teal'c's getting his. Cam is in the kitchen.

"I'm driving Teal'c back to the Base. Then I'm going home," she says. "I'll be fine." It's been more than enough time since that morning vodka. She's an emotional wreck, but she can certainly drive.

Sammy wants to argue. Dani glares. She doesn't want any company right now, just silence and solitude. She's known Sammy for a long time, and so she wins.

On the way back to Cheyenne Mountain she says: "Sammy got the report from the Ancient Outpost yesterday," and Teal'c says, "Colonel Carter made me aware of its contents."

The rest of the drive is passed in silence.

#

When they arrive, she doesn't leave. She should, she supposes, but instead she goes down into the Mountain with Teal'c, and changes into BDUs, and goes to her office. If she's going to read Jack's letters, she'd rather do it here.

She starts with the Letter of Intent.

It's mostly about his things. Sammy gets his motorcycle and telescope (she's already got the motorcycle, and the telescope is in storage) and his astronomical prints; Teal'c gets the _Simpsons_ action figures and DVDs, a number of books, and, for some reason, his kayak. General Landry (there's an address in California she won't need) gets the flag on his mantle, a specific set of framed photos, his collection of fighter plane models, and the sum of one hundred twelve dollars and fifty-five cents—to be paid in nickels.

_That_ makes her smile.

Sergeant Siler gets his tools. Walter gets a large bottle of aspirin and three-dozen doughnuts. General Hammond gets _two_ bottles of aspirin, a bottle of good Scotch, and Jack's medals.

There are other bequests and instructions. Some minor—his brown leather jacket is to be mailed to someone she doesn't know, with a fifty dollar bill in the top right pocket—some simply odd: she should take any old magazines and newspapers in the house at the time of his death to the underpass near Antlers Park and just leave them there.

There are a few monetary bequests. Checks to charities. Childrens sports, mostly. His furniture, housewares, clothing, is all to go to the Thrift Store at Peterson. His personal papers are to be shredded and burned.

That's everything.

She stares at the personal letter for a long time. Last words. She wonders when he wrote it. But she can't put off opening it forever. Finally she breaks the seal. It's handwritten. There's no salutation, and no date.

_If you're reading this, you're alive and I'm not. And you might think that sucks, but I'm just as glad it isn't the other way around. I don't know what happened, but whatever it was, I know you did your best to make it NOT happen. So you've got nothing to blame yourself for. Go on and have a good life. That's an order._

_It was an honor to work with you, Dr. Jackson. Hell, sometimes it was even fun._

_PS: Whoever your new guy is, buy him a bottle of good Scotch from me. He's going to need it._

"Bourbon, Jack," she whispers. "Cam drinks bourbon."

#

They have a week's leave, but she's busy. Things to do. Providing General Landry with two thousand plus nickels, for example. Fortunately everything in storage is carefully packed and labeled. She has no trouble finding most of the items she needs to bequeath. Sergeant Siler is pleased to get the tools. She drives them to his house in the truck, since there are quite a lot of them. Walter seems a little bewildered by the aspirin and doughnuts.

Teal'c is pleased to receive the books and the _Simpsons_ material (especially the action figures; Jack had a full set, including the hard-to-find ones), and just as baffled as she is by the legacy of the kayak.

General Landry doesn't explain about the nickels, but then, she didn't expect him to.

She mails the medals and the other aspirin to General Hammond in Washington with an explanatory note, and arranges for the delivery of a bottle of good Scotch.

She threw out all of Jack's old magazines and newspapers a long time ago, but she goes to the bookstore and buys one of everything on the stands and takes them to the specified drop-off point. She hopes that will suffice.

Jack's personal papers have sat in boxes in her study ever since she cleared out the back bedroom. Convenient: her shredder is there. She goes through them carefully but without looking at them—a useful skill she's learned over the years—setting aside things that might be needed to settle the estate. The rest she shreds, burning the shredded material in the fireplace.

She doesn't know what to do with the pictures of Sara and Charlie. Jack didn't say. She supposes—by rights—they belong to Sara now. There were no personal bequests to Sara in his letter, and Dani wonders why. Everything already said between them? Maybe.

She doesn't have to decide immediately.

The others keep circling around her—calling, dropping by—and it irritates her. Is her loss supposed to be greater than Sammy's or Teal'c's? Or is she supposed to be more fragile? Either concept is abhorrent.

She's only half-begun—and the whole house contents still to pack up and get rid of, and then her own things to move in (at least until everything is settled, which Colonel Fleming said could take up to a year)—when they're back on duty. No mission of course. First they have to pass their medical review, and that takes most of the day.

Her office is a horror, even though she's been in and out almost every day since they got back from 694, because she was MIA for two weeks before that, and the work just piles up. But she makes sure to catch Cam at end-of-shift.

"Walk me out?" she says.

He looks surprised, because it's only 1800, after all (early for her), but he nods. They ride up to the surface in silence. When they get to her Jeep (after all this time, she _still_ has a better parking place than he does), she stops him.

"Something for you," she says. She smiles faintly. This time next year maybe it will actually be funny. "From Jack." She opens the Jeep, rummages under the seat, pulls out the bottle of Booker's Beam. "He said to buy you a good bottle of Scotch, but I know you ... well, it's the thought that counts. He said you'd need it."

"Me?" Cam sounds surprised.

"The, uh, the new guy. That we got. Or who got us. That's you."

"Yeah," Cam says. He smiles at her. "You doing okay?"

He keeps asking her with words and without.

"It's more all the damned details than anything else," she says. "I'm pretty sure sticking me with this is his idea of revenge. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure? Because--"

"Go _home,_ Cam. I've been taking care of myself for years."

She watches as he walks off and gets in his car, and she even gets into her Jeep. But the thought of her desk nags at her, and she goes back inside.

#

Three hours later, the ringing of her cellphone interrupts her. She's barely begun excavating her stack of reports. She digs it out of her pocket, wondering why the hell somebody's calling her on it instead of using the landline.

"Jackson."

"All right. Where the hell are you?"

"And hello to you too, Cam. That's none of your damned business."

"You're at work, aren't you? Because you're sure not at home."

"And how would you know?"

"Because I'm sitting in your driveway right now."

She takes a deep breath. " _Why_ are you sitting in my driveway?"

"Because you weren't answering your home phone," Cam says reasonably.

"Did it occur to you I might be asleep?" she demands.

"Nope," he says simply. "Besides, you didn't shut your bedroom curtains this morning—or the ones in the living room—so I knew you weren't."

This time she counts to ten. "You phoned. You didn't get an answer. You drove to my house and looked in all my windows. Have I got that right?"

"Pretty much," Cam says unapologetically.

"And then you phoned me to find out where I was."

"Uh-huh," Cam agrees.

"So what if I didn't answer my phone?"

"Well, then, I figured I'd just call up Teal'c and have him look in your office before I started to worry."

"You don't have to worry about me," she says.

There's a contrarian silence from the other end of the line, and she contemplates hanging up. But he'd probably just call back.

"You want to catch a bite together on your way home?" Cam asks, as if the idea has just occurred to him. "Because with all this running around and sitting in driveways, I am _starved."_

She checks her watch. Almost 2130.

She isn't hungry, and she doesn't want to leave, but if she doesn't, she's pretty sure Cam _will_ call Teal'c. And while Teal'c doesn't have the same negative response to her workaholic habits her human teammates do, he's still probably going to go along with whatever Cam comes up with if Cam asks him to.

"Fine. Okay. The Chinese place down on Cheyenne Mountain Boulevard is open late."

"Great. Meet you there."

#

He's waiting for her when she arrives. "Food'll be here soon. I went ahead and ordered."

"Fine," she says. (She still can't believe he went to her _house._ ) "Look. You-- All of you-- You don't need to--"

"I told you," he interrupts quietly. "You don't need to go through this alone."

She rubs her eyes in exasperation, pushing her glasses up on her forehead. "I'm not alone," she mumbles through her fingers. "I've got all of you." _And none of you is giving me a moment's peace._

"That's right," Cam says. "So maybe you ought to start relying on us just a little."

She lowers her hands and stares at him, not sure of whether or not to be shocked. Is he _scolding_ her? Her glasses slide down and perch on the end of her nose. He reaches across the table and pushes them back into place.

"I do," she says slowly. In the field she counts on all of them to keep her alive. She does the same for them.

"Pretty sure you don't," Cam says. "When was the last time you talked to Sam?"

That's easy. "Today in the Commissary," she says, puzzled.

Cam smiles, but Dani thinks he looks a little sad. " _Really_ talked."

She thinks hard. They've been back from 694 for almost two weeks now. Not in that time, of course. Not on 694, because nobody talked there at all. That takes her back to January, and she was so busy then. There were a couple of Team things, but nothing with just her and Sammy. December? Everybody was busy with Christmas preparations (which reminds her; almost time to get re-checked to see if she's going to die of AIDS). "A while," she admits.

"So," Cam says, as if she's conceded a point. She's about to ask him what her spending the day talking to Sammy has to do with her relying on her team, but the food arrives.

The first time they all went to a Chinese restaurant, she'd expected Cam to be hopeless with chopsticks. He wasn't. Now she expects him to use them as a matter of course. When she takes the first bite of Ginger Beef, she realizes she actually _was_ hungry after all. Fortunately he's ordered the way he cooks: as if he expects to have to feed several extra people at a moment's notice.

"There's so much to do," she says, returning obliquely to the subject at hand once first hunger has been satisfied. She hopes if she can convince him she's legitimately busy he'll realize his time is better occupied elsewhere.

"At home or at work?" Cam asks. He dips a dumpling into the ginger sauce and pops it into his mouth.

"Both." She sighs. " _Why_ can't the Engineering staff learn --a foreign language?" she elides carefully, though they both know she means _Goa'uld_. Jay Felger prides himself on his command of _Goa'uld_. His interpretations of _Goa'uld_ hieroglyphs are often terrifyingly wrong. Those members of her staff who are fluent in _Goa'uld_ spend half their time up on 18 reading things to the Physics and Engineering staff.

"Teach 'em."

" _When?_ I mean, it's not impossible to learn if you have similar Semitic languages--" (meaning, "are fluent in Ancient Egyptian") "--but since they don't, someone--" (meaning her) "--would have to write teaching materials geared to someone who only reads and speaks English."

"Someone besides you must be able to do that."

"We're understaffed _now._ " Chronically. And writing an entry-level primer to an alien language is a pretty specialized skill-set. "If you think it's hard to staff your side, well, it's harder to staff mine."

"Yeah, well, that's not gonna go away," Cam agrees. "Home?" _So much for work, what about home?_

"I'm most of the way through the list of bequests. Need to go through Storage again to find a few things. Pack some boxes. Make the arrangements to get it all moved out."

"And that's where your friends come in," Cam says, and she realizes that he's not only maneuvered her into talking, but backed her into a corner where she'll look like a complete idiot if she says "no."

"Yeah, okay," she says. "Next time we've got a weekend."

"You know," Cam says meditatively, "some people find time to get things done after work. If you had, say, Sam pick up some packing boxes for you and meet you at your place tomorrow night, you wouldn't have so much to get through on the weekend."

"Has anybody ever told you you meddle?" she demands crossly.

"My Momma. All the time. Never could seem to break me of the habit, though," he says regretfully.

After the meal, he walks her to her Jeep. He's carrying the leftovers, but she has no actual doubt of who they're going home with, and she's right.

"Don't want you to starve to death, and I know you don't cook," he says, handing her the bag.

"Cam, you don't have to worry about me," she says. Maybe if she says it enough times she'll convince him.

"Baby, I have worried about you from the moment I laid eyes on you," he answers. He brushes her hair back out of her eyes, but before she can think of any suitable logical rejoinder, he's walking away.

She's _not_ his 'baby.'

#

Sammy is delighted to help, which surprises Dani a little. She brings over boxes and they assemble them, and go through the house making notes of what should go and what should stay. After nearly two years, a lot of what's here is Dani's. Much of the rest—pictures, books, mementoes—has already gone to its final destinations. Most of it was in storage, but even so, the house looks a little bare to her now.

"Kitchen goes," Dani says.

" _None_ of that is yours?" Sammy asks. She sounds a little incredulous.

"A couple of the mugs. And the espresso machine."

She'd never seen any reason to unpack her kitchen supplies.

"I still can't believe Cam got you that."

"And I love him for it. Nothing like starting the day with sixteen ounces of espresso."

Sammy makes a rude sound of amusement. "Amazing he knew you so well on such short acquaintance," she says.

"Isn't it?" she says blandly.

The linens will all go. The sheets won't fit her bed, and she might as well make a clean sweep. Someone can use them.

"Everything in the guest bedroom can go. We probably won't get snowed in again this year. I'll buy new."

"Dani, are you sure you're okay with this?" Sammy asks.

She sighs. "I will be. Right now I'm just trying to do what he said. And trying to deal with the idea that he _left me his fucking house, Sammy. Why did he do that?_ " Her voice rises sharply enough to jar her.

Sammy comes and puts her arms around her. It's comforting. "I guess he just wanted to take care of you, sweetie. Even when he ... couldn't."

"I know," she mumbles against Sammy's shoulder. "But what am I going to do with a _house?_ "

"Live here," Sammy says. "You have been, after all."

That was different. "Maybe," she says.

They don't get everything done that night. But they make a start.

They talk about Jack, too. A little. Because he's dead, and he trained them both. A civilian archaeologist who'd never held a gun in her life and a theoretical astrophysicist who—100 hours of flight-time in enemy airspace notwithstanding—knew nothing about ground combat and tactics and less about command. He remade them both. And he seemed invincible, even though they, of all people, know how many of their successes and escapes depended on chance and blind luck. His death makes them feel that much more vulnerable.

On the weekend, everyone's there—even Cassie—to move everything out of storage (they rent a _big_ truck to save trips) and back to the house to be gone through one last time. She finds the last of the things she needs to send off (the brown leather jacket, a box of fishing lures; other random and cryptic objects that will—undoubtedly—have more meaning to their recipients than they do to her), and more boxes of things she needs to shred; Teal'c carries those up to the library. 

Cassie claims several of Jack's t-shirts (now that they're going through the clothes instead of just packing them), asking anxiously if Dani minds. She says of course she doesn't—meaning it—and the clothes are triaged. Some things are too ratty to pass on, and are simply tossed. Teal'c is presented with a collection of caps.

"Oh, my god," Dani says excitedly, holding up a black leather motorcycle jacket. "I'd forgotten he'd kept this. Cam, come here. Does this fit?"

He tries it on, looking puzzled, and it _does_ fit, because it was a little loose on Jack, as she recalls. "Not exactly my style," he says slowly.

"You'll want it, though," she says with certainty. "It's the one he bought in 1969. Where were we?"

"That flea-market in Texas," Sammy says. "I remember. I thought we were going to have to knock you unconscious to get you into that dress."

"It was a horrible dress," Dani says feelingly. "It was _purple_."

Cam is looking both stunned and pleased now that he understands what she meant. He runs his fingers down the sleeve almost reverently. "So... this jacket has time-traveled," he says.

"That jacket has even been to the future," Sammy says.

Dani glances at Cassie. They met her there, and she knew, then, the day and hour of Jack's death. All of their deaths, maybe.

"And I'm going to meet you there and send you back again," Cassie says. She smiles. "And I'll see Uncle Jack again."

"But--?" Sammy says. Prompting.

"But I can't let any of you know anything about your futures. Or _the_ future. Because that would change the past, and cause a causality paradox, and that would be _bad,_ " Cassie recites in a sing-song voice. "I know, Aunt Sam."

"So who's up for pizza?" Cam asks, taking off the jacket and setting it aside.

#

In the week after the furniture pick-up, Dani sleeps on the day-bed in the smallest guest room. The dark and empty house echoes. The only really habitable room is her study—unchanged—so she spends most of her time there. Her clothes, removed now from Jack's dresser, are in boxes in the master bedroom, waiting for the arrival of her own furniture (when she can manage to schedule it). SG-1 is back in the rotation, and she doesn't have the free time to spend moving even the small items of her personal inventory from storage to the house.

She could stay with Sammy of course (Sammy's offered) or just stay on Base. But Sammy really doesn't have a guest room any more now that Cassie lives with her, and Dani finds the idea of spending twenty-four hours a day beneath a mile of rock vaguely claustrophobic. And there's no real privacy there.

She wants to be alone.

And she keeps thinking there's going to be a time when she gets her wish, some point after which all the _details_ will be over and she'll be _left in peace,_ but as February turns into March, she slowly realizes it isn't going to happen.

First there's moving her furniture into the house. That takes an entire weekend. The house has more square footage than her loft did, but it's cut up into rooms. Her piano looms loweringly in the corner of the living room where the television always was, and with the table in the dining room, there's no place for the sideboard. Fortunately she can put it in the living room, and put her sound-system on top of it.

One of the chairs goes into the usual chair-place under the window, though it looks strange to her there. She has no idea of where to fit the other. Somewhere.

Her bed fills the bedroom. Jack's was a double. Hers is a king, and there's barely enough room for the matching night tables. At least the dresser and campaign chest fit in there too, but the blanket chest has to go into the (now empty) guest room. The white noise generator and its speakers have been crowded off into a corner of the bedroom; she's going to have to figure out where to put them later.

"Where'd you find the time to _buy_ all this stuff, baby?" Cam demands, when they finally have everything in. Sammy and Cassie are taking the truck back. Unpacking will take a while, but there's no hurry.

"I didn't buy much of it," she says. Not the stuff they moved today, anyway. "Family furniture." Her father's family, she's guessing, but she doesn't really know. She knows very little about her parents' personal lives. "I think some of the silver belonged to my mother before she married. I'm not sure." She's lucky she has this much. Nick was selective about what he saved. There were no personal papers.

"Good pieces," Cam says, running his hand down the wooden arm of the couch.

"Older than Teal'c," she says, and Teal'c bows, acknowledging the witticism.

#

Once the furniture is there, that should be that. But it isn't. At work, she tries to keep her interactions with others to a minimum. She shuts her office door. Cam opens it—wandering in for some unimportant thing that could be handled by email or a phone call—and leaves it open. She gets in early in order to miss the others at breakfast. Someone almost always shows up to tell her they're waiting for her. Or calls. On one memorable occasion there was an email with a picture of a plate of waffles in it that she couldn't get closed. She had to go find Sammy, which meant ... going to the Commissary.

"Bitch," she said, sitting down.

"I'll fix it for you after breakfast," Sammy answered unrepentantly.

She knows Cam is behind all of this. Just as she knows—with the inevitability of gravity—that she can skip lunch for two days, but on the second of those days, he'll show up in her office with a sandwich, and he'll stay until she eats it. After a week of this, she decides it's much easier just to go to lunch. At least she can cut that short.

Between missions—nothing unusual there; all fairly routine, meaning none of them comes really close to death, and they generally nail the Mission Objective—she keeps up her fourteen-hour days. Nothing else to do, after all. She's reluctant to go home to the house that's now so jarringly _hers,_ reluctant to finish the process of moving in, though it makes no difference now. The only things left from _before_ are the carpet and the curtains, and a few photographs she doesn't know what to do with, buried at the bottom of one of her dresser drawers.

Cam has invited her to go out, to come over. (To come to Movie Night.) So has Sammy. She keeps saying "no."

But one week Cam decides—unilaterally; of course he doesn't consult her—that Team Night is due for a change of venue, and it's going to be at _her_ place. She protests in vain that she has no television set. He says they'll make do. On Friday night, Sammy drags her out of the Mountain right at shift-change to lay in some basic supplies, and about an hour after they get to the house, Cam and Teal'c arrive bearing several casserole dishes and a stack of board games. _Scrabble. Monopoly. Risk. Candyland. Life._

Of course, they have to unpack her kitchen (she hasn't gotten around to it) and the rest of her linens (only half done) before they can set the table, but apparently this is part of Cameron Mitchell's Master Plan (he says it would be a crime and a sin to put plates on a table like that without a tablecloth, and fortunately, she actually owns one). 

But then there's chicken with dumplings, and broccoli with cheese sauce, and Cam puts a three-berry crumble in the oven to warm for later. (She'd wondered why Sammy bought heavy cream at the store. Now she knows. Sammy was in on this, of course.)

And then they play board games. They play Scissors-Paper-Stone (triple elimination) to determine who gets to choose the first game, and Teal'c wins. He almost always does. Dani knows what he'll pick, of course.

Teal'c loves _Candyland_ (some bizarre cross-cultural thing she's never been able to figure out). It's a game designed for young children—the box says ages four to six—but Sam once said the mathematics of game play resemble a Markov chain if the deck is reshuffled after every draw (they do), and over the years, SG-1 has re-written the rules slightly. It's now a little more bloodthirsty, depending on which version they're playing. Once Cam is briefed on the revised rules, play begins. Soon he's whooping and groaning right along with Sammy at his misfortunes. Dani's eliminated early—she gets sent back to the beginning of the board when Cam lands on her square, which means she's pretty much out of the game. But the rest of the contest is hard fought, and Teal'c seems pleased.

Sammy wins the next round of choices (Teal'c doesn't get to compete because he's already won), and picks _Scrabble._

"I'm gonna lose, aren't I?" Cam says as they set up the board.

"Try to maintain a positive attitude," Sammy answers wickedly.

Dani finds it hard to concentrate, though the table is a little quieter for _Scrabble_ than it was for _Candyland._ Not a lot, though, with Cam complaining good-naturedly that he thought they were supposed to stick to English and Sammy saying that it _is_ English. They don't let her have _"Bremsstrahlung,"_ though, even though she insists the word is now in common English use. She nails both of them with "transuranic," though, and by then Dani doesn't have enough letters left to make up a word—not in English, anyway—and Cam is staring down at his rack of tiles looking rueful.

"Dessert," he says firmly, as Sammy totals up the points.

Dani follows him into the kitchen. Since he unpacked everything, he knows where everything is, but she feels she ought to anyway.

"I can't believe you don't have a whisk and mixing bowls," he says, opening her silverware drawer.

She makes a rude noise. "I don't have a television, either. Does that mean we starve?"

He grins at her. "We improvise."

He takes a couple of forks and a saucepan—because she _does_ have a saucepan—and adds the cream, and vanilla, some sugar, a dash of brandy. She peers into her cupboards suspiciously. She knew she had the brandy and the sugar, but where did the vanilla come from? No, everything's normal there. Maybe he brought it with him.

He begins to beat the mixture quickly. "You know, this would be easier if you had a whisk," he says.

"Bring your own next time. Or, you know, don't expect to _cook_ here."

"You need a proper kitchen."

"And a cook to go with it, I suppose?"

"That could be arranged."

She has no intention of following Cam down one of these conversational rabbit-holes tonight. "Coffee?"

"Sure."

She checks with Sammy and Teal'c (after so long here in exile, Teal'c's actually developed a taste for coffee) and returns to the kitchen to make cappuccino. It's true that there's more cleanup involved than with just plain _coffee_ , but she really can't resist showing off.

"Glad you like it," Cam says, watching her.

"I do," she says. "I just wish I had one for my office."

"Maybe better not," Cam says. "We'd never get you out of there then."

After dessert, she cedes the next choice of game to Cam. Both of the remaining options look equally unappealing. She has a chess set, but only two could play, and she doesn't think Cam plays chess. Cards? She always loses.

Cam picks _Risk._ She thought he would. It's long and it's boring and involves military strategy. He starts setting up the game.

"What are those?" she asks. Some of the pieces he's removing from the box aren't familiar.

"I figured we oughta update this one a little," Cam says. "These here are your transport rings, these are your _ha'tak_ , and your _al'kesh_ , and these babies are your Death Gliders. And okay—here's your Stargate. Where shall we put it?"

"Egypt," Dani says instantly. _Risk_ with a Stargate? Maybe more interesting than she thought.

"Egypt it is," Cam says, plunking the object down on the board. It doesn't look much like a Stargate—for obvious security reasons—but close enough for gameplay.

"What are the rules for the deployment of these devices?" Teal'c asks, and Cam grins, digs into the box, and passes out sheets of paper. Dani quickly notes that whoever controls the Stargate can import additional reinforcements almost at will.

She wins the high roll and immediately claims Egypt. Cam and Sam promptly claim North Africa and East Africa, and Teal'c takes the Congo. She retaliates on her next turn by claiming South Africa, and suggests to Teal'c that if he'll attack Cam on her behalf, she'll refrain from attacking him.

"Do you propose an alliance, Danielle Jackson?" Teal'c asks gravely.

"At least until they're out of Africa, yes," she says. "And maybe until we destroy them completely."

"You hope," Cam says.

The rest of the territories are allotted and play begins. She's only played _Risk_ once or twice, but it's actually a lot more interesting when you can attack enemy armies from space or ring down troops into opposing territories without having to cross borders (since you can't move a lot of them at a time with transport rings, though, you have to mount a conventional attack as well, to keep the enemy occupied). Teal'c keeps his word, and the two of them sweep Cam out of North Africa. She's claimed Madagascar, and uses it as a staging area to obliterate Sam's forces. Now two of her borders are secure, but (pretty much as she suspected) Teal'c turns on her and attacks. He's in collusion with Sam, who sweeps her out of North America at the same time, since Dani's withdrawing troops from there to reinforce her armies in Egypt. At the same time, Cam is sweeping through her fleet, taking out her _al'kesh_ (she can't replace them) and then engaging her Death Gliders with a combined fleet of his own _al'kesh_ and his Death Gliders, which cut them to ribbons.

"Teal'c helped you with this," she says suspiciously.

"Oh, he provided a certain amount of input," Cam says innocently.

Once she's lost Egypt—and Madagascar has been reduced to a radioactive cinder by a space attack—she can't hold South Africa for long. She manages to evacuate some of her troops via ha'tak, but Teal'c is able to claim the rest of them. She retreats into Southern Europe while Cam and Sammy slug it out and Teal'c sits in Africa, building an enormous army.

They're ignoring her _ha'tak_ , though. So she's able to attack Giza from space—she doesn't take out the Stargate, but the loss to Teal'c in men is enormous—and to tell Teal'c that Cam did it. Teal'c comes thundering up out of Africa into Western Europe to smash Cam flat, and she's able to seize Britain in the confusion.

The game takes three hours to play out, and by the end of it, they've reduced most of the planet to a radioactive wasteland. She's wiped out first, but Sammy follows fairly quickly, having lost her _ha'taks_ to a combined assault from Cam and Teal'c. Cam and Teal'c fight it out to the bitter end, with Cam staging an all-out assault to gain control of the Stargate, but he loses at last.

They both actually seem pleased about it.

"Now _that's_ what I call a _game!_ " Cam says. "Admit it, Teal'c. You don't have anything like that on Chulak."

"We do not," Teal'c says. "On Chulak, the war games are not played with boards."

Cam looks quizzical.

"They're live," Dani says. "They play with intars." When they don't use real weapons.

"Oh," he says. "Right. This is more fun, though."

Teal'c does his eyebrow smile. "Fun" is not a Jaffa concept, but Teal'c has embraced it with a vengeance.

By then it's a little after midnight, and Sammy says she really ought to get back to Cassie, and Cam says he'll drive Teal'c back to the Mountain (with the usual sidebar about how it's _really_ time Teal'c got a place to live _off_ the Base), and they pack up the game, and collect the scattered boxes of the other games. She tries to get Cam to take away the leftovers—because there are some—but he tells her she can just bring him back the dishes when they're empty.

"Did you have a good time?" he asks, standing in the door.

_Did you give me any choice?_ But he looks as if he honestly wants to know, and she really isn't sure herself. "Sure," she says. 

He doesn't look quite satisfied, and she doesn't know why.

But after that, she pretty much gives up. She leaves her door open at work, and while she doesn't accept Cam's invitations to drop by, she accepts Sammy's. And things get better.

Until April.

#

In the second week of April she's sitting in her office one afternoon, and of course Cam is there, because he's in her office _every_ afternoon. He's suggesting his latest plan to drive her mad, which is a weekend spent horseback riding up in the Garden of the Gods. He's grinning at her coaxingly, and she's smiling back—because it's the stupidest idea she's ever heard _in her life_ —and she laughs and says: "Oh, my god, Cam; are all pilots idiots or is it just you? Or did you just leave your brain down there on the ice with the rest of those losers?"

She knows before she says it— _while_ she's saying it—that it's wrong. But the words are out of her mouth before she can stop them.

Cam just stares at her for several seconds as all the good-humor fades from his face. His eyes go pale.

"Cam, I--"

"You don't say that," he begins slowly. "You don't _get_ to say that. _Ever._ Yeah, I left a few things down there on the ice. I left my ship there. I left my co-pilot there. I left two dozen men and women there to keep SG-1 alive! We went up against a fleet of _al'kesh_ that we knew going in we had _no_ chance of taking out—and we did it gladly, because you know what? They told us we were doing it to give you folks a shot!"

She's never heard him raise his voice in anger before. She didn't think he could lose his temper. Now the sheer force of his rage makes her cringe back in her seat.

"Cam, I--" she's shaking her head. She didn't mean it. She didn't mean to say it.

"And maybe you think we were just _stupid!_ Maybe you think their lives weren't as _important_ as yours! But those were my _friends_ I went up with that day, and not _one_ of them made it home, and you will _honor their memory!"_

"I'm sorry," she blurts out. "Cam, I-- I'm sorry."

He stares at her for a long beat of silence, then turns and walks out of her office.

After he's gone she just sits and shakes, hugging herself tightly. She's too stunned to think past the essentials of the situation: she made a stupid joke and Cam got mad.

No. She made an _unforgivably_ stupid joke and Cam got _furious._

What was she _thinking?_

She hadn't been thinking at all. And she can't think now, because all she can do is replay her words and his in her head, trying to find a way around them. And there isn't any. The only way around is for her never to have opened her mouth in the first place, but she'd just wanted to...

What?

Oh, god, she can't even remember now.

He was so angry. And she deserved it. That's the worst.

After a few minutes she realizes that Sammy is standing in her doorway. "Hey," she says.

"Hey yourself." Sammy comes in and closes the door. "Want to talk about it? I, ah, saw Cam heading back to his office. Well, actually, I got out of his way."

Dani winces. "I did something stupid."

"Must have been some "thing" if you set him off like that," Sammy says. "I haven't heard him yell like that in years."

"You _heard_ him?"

"Dani," Sammy says gently, "your door was open. Half the Base heard him."

She drops her head in her hands. Bad enough he hates her, and that's nearly the worst thing she can imagine. Worse, everyone heard him.

"I made a joke," she says.

"Must have been a pretty bad one."

"In poor taste. I said I was sorry," she adds defensively.

Sammy looks considering. "Well, he usually cools down pretty fast. Give it an hour, then try again."

Dani nods. Normally—other days, other fights, other people—she'd just ignore the whole thing and wait for it to adjust itself.

But she can't let this go.

#

She times it out—sixty minutes exactly—then goes down to his office. At this time of day, he's usually there. His door is open. He's at his desk. She waits in the doorway, but he doesn't acknowledge her presence.

"Cam? I'm sorry," she says forlornly. "I should never have--"

"You should be," he says, cutting her off. He doesn't look up from his desk.

"I am," she says.

"Fine."

She hesitates in the door a few seconds longer, but he still doesn't look up. So she leaves.

#

She drives home. On time, but for her that's early. Only a few patches of snow left. _April is the cruelest month._ Who said that? They were right.

 _"Or did you just leave your brain down there on the ice with the rest of those losers?"_ How could she have _said_ something like that?

They lost the entire 302 Squadron over Antarctica. Cam's squadron. His friends. His _team._ All dead.

Saving their lives.

She knew the cost of keeping SG-1 alive that day was high. But the dead had only been statistics to her. Nobody she knew. Then Cam had come to the SGC, and his past had been only a point of reference. He'd been one of _them,_ not a 302 pilot. Not one of the two dozen dead buried in the Antarctic ice or charred to ash above it.

They'd all been his friends.

What she said is unforgivable.

She goes into the house and curls up on the end of the couch. Miserable.

In the morning—no particular sleep—she gets to work early. Early enough to see Cam and Sammy getting out of Cam's car together. She hangs back, though, and they don't see her.

#

She never remembered her dreams before Jolinar. Afterward, all her nightmares seemed to belong to someone else, even when—as the years wore on—they were really hers. All too alien to be terrifying. Or maybe they were so terrifying they were simply alien. All Sam knows is that the dreams—when she remembers them—just leave her disoriented, not frightened, and maybe that should be the most frightening thing of all.

She's caught between. Dani. Cam. But it's Cam who needs her now. So she takes him home (goes home with him) that night, warms up leftovers in his kitchen while he sits silent in front of the television, pours a medicinal amount of bourbon into him on top of two beers, takes him to bed.

Throughout the evening he's been inching the apartment's thermostat up, degree after degree. It's April, still chilly, but by bedtime it's over eighty in the apartment, and he's closed every window and still gets down an extra blanket for the bed. "Sorry," he mumbles. "Sorry."

She strokes his hair. It's damp with sweat, but he's still shaking, faint and fierce, with bone-deep cold that comes from two years in the past. "It's okay, Cam," she says, and strips down to skin before she climbs into the bed.

She takes him into her arms, pulling the blankets up snug around his neck. The room is like a sauna, but he shivers harder as he clings to her. She wills the touch of her hands to reach him not _now_ , but _then_ (physicists lead charmed lives, and the quirks of quarks get you coming and going), to enfold him with her human warmth in the wreckage of his shattered 302, to promise him that yes, someone will come for him, someone will find him, he won't die there, he won't die alone...

He shivers and shudders against her, teeth chattering with a phantom cold as persistent as the illusion of a phantom limb, even while both their bodies are as slick with sweat as if they'd spent a drowsy evening making love. Even when he finally drifts into an uneasy sleep his body doesn't relax. His fingers twitch against her skin as he dreams, reaching for the controls of his ship.

She knows nobody else knows (Dani doesn't know) that Cam has nightmares too. Sam's the place where the knowledge of their damage (SG-1's damage) intersects, and that only works (they only work) if she doesn't tell what she knows. The Colonel died, and Colonel Polanco died, and Cam has to be more-than-human, because they'll never survive (Dani will never survive) another death. Sam thinks she won't either, and it's not just the thought of losing another teammate, bad enough, but the thought of losing Cam. He's absolved her a hundred times for those fifteen hours, but she'll never absolve herself: it should have been a rescue operation, not a salvage operation, and the fact that (technically) it wasn't her call to make, that _she_ wasn't the one who dropped the ball, doesn't lift the burden of her guilt when it's her oldest (surviving) friend who bears the scars of her lapse of attention.

She drifts in and out of sleep in the oven of his bedroom. He shakes and mutters in his dreams, his hands twitching over her skin as if she's the 302's control interface. "Cold. So cold..." he whispers.

The Snakeskinners are only names on the Wall to Dani, but she knew them all. She spent a lot of time out at Nowhere Field, tweaking a machine that was half computer, half bomb. They aren't names to her. They're Brian and Ray-Ban and Katie and Red and…

They're all dead and Cam's still mourning them and Dani's never suspected.

And Sam doesn't know how they'll ever get past this.

#

Seven days.

Dani doesn't want to admit to missing him, but she does. Because even though Cam's here, he isn't _there._ He hasn't forgiven her. He's polite, and he's formal, and he doesn't smile.

And it hurts.

And oh, god, she _doesn't know what to do about it._ She's compliant on missions (they've caught two), she's getting her reports in on time, she's even _going home._ She can't think of another thing to do to please him, and everything she's doing isn't working.

"Hey there," Sammy says, coming into her office. "Missed you at lunch."

"Wasn't hungry." And it doesn't matter how many lunches she misses, Cam isn't going to show up in her office with a sandwich and tease her until she eats.

She's staring morosely at her screen. New and exciting wall-carvings that SG-11 brought back, but since they're Ancient hieroglyphs, what they say is anybody's guess. She doesn't have a large enough sample of written Ancient to be absolutely sure and—surprise!—there are several dialects. Whatever translation she comes up with is going to be _completely_ unreliable.

"You've been skipping a lot of meals lately," Sammy says.

"No reason to go." Cam won't talk to her.

"Look--" Sammy says.

She sits up. "Sammy, all his friends are _dead._ They died saving us. And I made _fun_ of that. I don't know what I was _thinking!_ "

"It's not the first time somebody's said something stupid around here. Remember the "Carbon Freeze" joke Sergeant Dorsey made about Colonel O'Neill?"

Dani exhales, a long shuddering breath. Jack is gone, and losing Cam—too—is unbearable, no matter what form the loss takes. "I thought Teal'c was going to kill him on the spot," she says.

Sammy smiles encouragingly. "So did Sergeant Dorsey. The point is--"

"The point is, this was _me!_ I was _there!_ I know what it cost to keep us alive that day! All those people— _Cam's_ people—they went up against Anubis to save us and they _died!_ He is _never_ going to forgive me! _Never!_ "

"Look. Just leave him alone for a couple of weeks and see what happens," Sammy says. Which is insane. She's leaving him alone— _he's_ leaving _her_ alone— _now._

She doesn't know what to do.

"I'll ask General Landry," she says. "You can get a replacement. I can--"

"Oh, for god's sake, Dani!" Sammy snaps. And to her utter horror, Dani bursts into tears.

Sammy shuts the door, and comes over, and hands her Kleenex, and rubs her back. "You're wrapped pretty tight over this, aren't you?" she says.

"No," Dani says around a wad of tissue.

Yes.

"Look. For what it's worth, he doesn't want you off the team. I've known Cam for a long time. He says what he means, and he says _everything_ he means, and if he didn't say "you're off the team," you're not off the team."

Sammy seems to be in great form today. Dani isn't off the team. Great. But she should be, because they can't go on like this. It will look better if she resigns. It won't count as a mark against him.

"I've apologized, Sammy. I _have._ Does he think I _meant_ to say it? This is my fault, Sammy. I _know_ this is my fault. I'm the guilty party. I offended him—oh, _god,_ did I offend him. But... he _knows_ I'm sorry. If he wants more, shouldn't he be negotiating for it? I'll do it."

There's a long pause while Sammy thinks it over. Dani scrubs at her face until her eyes are sore. Crying. God. It seems to her sometimes as if she's done nothing _but_ cry since they got back from 694.

"Well, I think what the problem is here is Cam just doesn't think you meant it."

Dani stares at her in horror. He thinks...?

"Oh, he heard all the words. But... think of it as if he were raised in a different culture. You apologized, he didn't recognize it—maybe even just subconsciously—as a proper apology because it wasn't made in accordance with his culture. So he can't stop being mad yet."

Dani drops her head to her hands for a moment and takes a deep breath. Okay. It's hideous, but it makes a warped kind of sense, and god knows she's given this identical lecture to Sammy often enough. She'll just have to keep saying it until he believes her. She can do this. She's apologized to _Goa'uld_ , after all. It's odd that this will be harder, since she actually means it this time.

She starts to get to her feet.

"Um," Sammy says. "Dani? What you need to do isn't actually _talk_ to him. You've already tried talking to him and that didn't really work out, did it? This time, you should just show up at his apartment with some kind of peace offering. Don't mention the fight. Just sit down and have a conversation with him."

" _Talk_ to him?" Dani says, appalled, as if talking to people isn't her job, as if she can't talk to people in any one of two dozen languages (she knows more, but not to speak them).

"Talk to him," Sammy repeats. "About anything else."

"That's not an apology."

"Yes it is. The only kind he'll actually believe at this point."

And she thinks of all the times that she and Jack had fought (and fought, and fought, and _fought_ ) and then he'd come to her office or she'd even go to his house and it would be over. Silently.

But that had never been like this. _Personal._

"He'll throw me out," she says slowly.

"So. Then you're thrown out," Sammy says. "Then you go back the next night." She sits down. "You're just lucky you aren't sleeping with him."

Dani almost chokes. _"What?"_ How could that make things worse?

Sammy smiles. "Oh, there was this time—back around the time when we were actually pretty much living together—and I really put my foot in it. Oh, big time. And, well, I had to sit in his living room for an entire _week_ before he'd so much as _look_ at me."

"What is he," Dani snaps without thinking, "a Unas?" And then she slaps her hand over her mouth in horror because the last time she shot her mouth off without thinking she _started_ this mess.

Sammy purses her lips. "And you might just get better results with him if maybe you aren't _angry_ when you go in there."

"I'm not angry!" Dani snarls. No. She's terrified. And she doesn't know why. She rubs her eyes again. Bad enough she cried at all. She won't keep doing it. "So if I sit in his living room for a week without talking to him, he'll think I'm sincere?" she says, after a pause. She wishes General Landry much joy of re-arranging their mission schedule in that case.

Sammy smiles. "It'll show him you're serious about it, at least. Although I don't think it'll take a week. That was a _really_ special case."

Dani stares at her. "And some day you're going to tell me what it was, aren't you?" She isn't quite sure she wants to know. 

Sammy looks thoughtful. "In another twenty years. Maybe."

A safe promise, since none of them will live another twenty years. "Uh-huh," Dani says. "What do you suggest I bring him?" She might as well consult the resident cultural expert on Cameron Mitchell.

Sammy thinks about this one for several minutes. "The worst movies you can find. A bunch of 'em, on a Friday night. If he'll let you in, just sit down on his couch and watch them, whether he watches them with you or not."

"Okay. Got it." Friday is three days away.

"Good luck," Sammy says. Dani smiles wanly. Okay. She's stupid and malicious and actively vicious; she's known that for years. But why didn't anybody tell her their Team Commander was an _alien?_

After much consideration and research, she chooses _Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Reefer Madness: The Musical, Teenagers From Outer Space_ , and _Ishtar: The Director's Cut._ She has to drive all over town to find copies, but it's worth it. They're all supposed to be pretty bad.

#

Friday night, and she's on Cam's doorstep, holding ten hours of the worst video ever and a six-pack of beer. She's been lots more terrified and just this nervous, but _so much is riding on this._

Okay, no. If he slams the door in her face she can come back tomorrow and Sunday and _maybe for the rest of her life_ and she's pretty sure Teal'c knows the combination to the safe in Walter's office where Cam's duplicate apartment keys are. So she could just get those, and come over in the middle of the night, and Cam could _shoot_ her.

Oh, god. Bad joke. Hasn't he had enough people _die_ around him? Why the hell did he come here to the SGC? Dying is their business. Most of the Gate Teams don't make it through a two-year tour with the same roster they started with. SG-1 had been a shining exception.

_Stop thinking,_ she tells herself desperately. _And for god's sake, don't say anything once you get in there._

_If._

At least if he throws her out, she won't have to watch the movies.

She knocks on the door. He opens the door. Looks at her with the "no expression" she's gotten hopelessly resigned to over the past ten days.

"I brought over some movies," she says. Waits.

He still doesn't say anything, but he opens the door wider. And walks away.

Okay, dealing with aliens is her job. She sets the six-pack down by the door—an imported brand she thought he might like to try—closes the door, hangs up her coat, and makes herself (relatively) at home. She pretty much knows where everything is. She's here to watch movies, so that's what she'll do. She decides to start with _Ishtar._ It's the longest. Almost three hours with the Director's Cut Added Footage.

She sits down in the middle of the couch, works her way through the opening menus, and gets to the feature. Cam is moving around the apartment as if she isn't there. Into the living room, into the kitchen—where there's water running—out again. He neither looks at her nor speaks to her. She concentrates on the movie as if it's a vital cultural document her life depends on deciphering.

Okay, movies aren't completely her thing, and generally she just watches them to gloss the cultural references for Teal'c (at least she used to) ... but ... didn't they say this was a _comedy?_

It really isn't.

Oh, god, she's bored. At least she would be if she weren't so nervous. There's at least ten hours of movies here. Is she going to have to watch them _all?_

Cam disappears into the bedroom. Maybe he's going to go to bed, although it's a little early for it. Stranger things have happened.

She knows he and Sammy spent the night together last week. If sleeping with him is the price of forgiveness, she'll do it. But she knows ... no. It wouldn't be.

He comes back out of the bedroom a few minutes later, and he's changed from Civilian Work Clothes (slacks and a shirt) to his Comfy Sweats. A good sign. Still ignoring her though. Back off to the kitchen. Too bad he can't fit a couch in there, he spends so much damned time in there. She should see about getting him one of those mini-TVs to mount under one of the cabinets.

She hears noises. Clinking. Clanking. Water running. She keeps her eyes on the screen, though. She wonders what he's doing in there. She can outwait him. Sammy said not to talk, anyway. Maybe he _is_ a Unas. Okay. She can do Unas; they're actually rather nice once you get to know them. The movie's really bad, though. Unas cave-paintings are a _lot_ more interesting; she wonders if she can possibly get General Landry to go for a return mission to P3X-888. Probably not; the IOA isn't terribly interested in funding missions of purely cultural importance and god knows the Pentagon isn't. Of course, it _is_ the original homeworld of the _Goa'uld_ , so maybe if she phrases things properly, she can get a mission approved and piggyback a study of the cave-paintings onto _that._ A truly alien aboriginal culture, and besides, the original host-species of the _Goa'uld_ ; that should be worth something. And at least Unas petroglyphs don't talk, because the dialogue she's listening to actually _painful_. 

She switches on the French sub-titles and groans. Oh, god, whoever translated this should be _shot._ She snorts rudely at a particularly stupid choice on the part of the translator. The sound of the water from the kitchen pauses for a moment, then resumes. He's listening.

"That's not what he _said,_ " she says aloud. Experimentally.

There's an answering snort from the kitchen.

Perhaps communication has been established.

#

If she's going to have to watch these by herself, why didn't she pick something _else?_ Okay, the movie isn't the point, but ... this is torture.

Dunes. She hates dunes. They're hell to hike in. Nagada was built in the erg, not the reg; the Abydans are sensible people and don't like slogging through soft sand any more than she does. Oh, look, there's another camel. Camels are nice. Why doesn't the SGC keep camels around for when they send them to all those desert worlds?

What the hell is he doing in the kitchen? Cooking? Why? Surely he's already eaten? She begins muttering along with the movie, translating the dialogue. It sounds much better in Russian. Most of it can't be translated into _Goa'uld_ at all, and she keeps falling behind. Then natives show up, speaking what the filmmakers apparently believe is the local language. She utters a low wail of despair.

"Not in _Saudi Arabia!_ They're five hundred miles from where that language-group is spoken! Oh, god, he should be speaking Farsi, not Omotik! Okay, _maybe_ Arabic. But Farsi is so much more likely, really, and in reality, he's actually going to be speaking one of the--" She breaks off as she hears a snicker from the kitchen. "Don't you people know where you are?" she demands of the television. She switches the subtitles to Spanish. They're worse.

"Desert outside of LA, I'd imagine," Cam says, walking into the living room. "Same one they film everything in."

"They _said_ they filmed on location," she says, waving the box in the air. For a moment, she's managed to forget he isn't speaking to her and she's terrified.

"Los Angeles is a location," Cam says.

"I went to school there," she says. "It did _not_ look like that."

"Must'a filmed in Malibu, then," Cam says, unwilling to concede the point.

She peers at the case. It doesn't say what location they filmed in. "'Academy Award-winning actor,'" she reads.

"Can't believe everything you see in print," Cam says, and goes back into the kitchen.

Yeah, like the part about this being _funny._

But he talked to her.

She wishes she didn't care.

#

Now they're off to Morocco. And apparently Chuck and Lyle have been recruited as spies. They remind her a bit of Felger and Coombs, but that's hardly an inducement to watch this. There are KGB agents (in addition to CIA agents), but she can't understand a single word of the Russian; it's too badly garbled. Oh, there's the translation. God. Is that what they _think_ they're saying? She snaps an irritated phrase at the screen.

Cam comes back out into the living room again. "Looks like you're going to need this," he says, handing her a beer.

"For this movie I need _drugs,"_ she says feelingly.

Cam just smiles (she tries to ignore the pang of relief it gives her) and sits down on the couch. His usual spot. "Biscuits're in. What else you bring?"

She passes him the cases. He inspects them carefully. "Classics," he pronounces.

"Apparently," she says.

A few minutes later he goes back into the kitchen. Lucky Cam. He doesn't have to watch this damned ongoing-process-of-torture-by-celluloid. Maybe they should just send the _Goa'uld_ a bunch of DVDs and tell them they're classified _Tau'ri_ military documents. She finishes her beer. "Boring" is in her job description, but this is just irritating, although the movie isn't the actual point. She keeps reminding herself of that. It's the only way she'll get through this.

Something smells good.

Cam comes out about ten minutes later carrying a large plate and two more beers. "I'm betting you didn't eat dinner."

She tries hard to remember. Skipped lunch. Stopped for coffee on the way here. Did she get something then? "I don't remember," she admits meekly.

"You're going to burn out," he says, and she keeps her face still with an effort, thinking of 302s dissolving in flame in the blue Antarctic sky. They'd all seen the film from _Prometheus_ , and she doesn't know about Sammy, but the fact Heliotrope Flight was gone hadn't registered with her as much as the fact they'd left one of their own behind in a living death in the frozen dark. 

Cam sits down, sets the fresh beers on the end-table, spreads a hand-towel over his lap, sets the plate on it. Biscuits split open and filled with slices of ham. Butter and brown sugar is oozing out of the sides and trickling down. "Dig in," he says.

She has to move over next to him to get at the food, so she does.

Oh. Good.

"I know you don't keep pigs," she says. Because she's damned sure he made the biscuits from scratch. Oh, god, is she _ever_ going to learn to stop just opening her mouth and saying whatever pops into her mind around him?

"No," he says. It actually comes out much closer to "Naw," and she feels herself relax even more. She realizes consciously what she's known unconsciously for quite a while: the more at ease Cam is, the more his idiolect reflects the place he grew up. The closer he gets to a regionless American Standard vocal-pattern, the more you know that he's ... well _"distressed"_ covers just about everything, doesn't it? But now she knows explicitly. When you can't hear the South in Cam's voice any more, it's time to duck and cover. "Uncle sent me a ham. Guess m'family figures there's no food up here."

"Not like this," she says feelingly.

She eats six of the biscuits, by which time her hands are greasy and sticky, so she goes to the bathroom to wash up—and to escape the movie for a few minutes—but then she comes back, and _where the hell is she supposed to sit?_ Because she was in the middle of the couch to start with, and then she was next to Cam after that, and _any_ place in the entire living room she sits down in now is going to look like an explicit declaration of ... something.

But he's already up off the couch before she has to decide, taking the plate back into the kitchen, so she decides to leave _him_ with the problem of where to sit, and takes the end of the couch where he usually sits. It's next to the beer, anyway.

It's warm from his body heat.

#

He comes back and sits down next to her and says "you mind?" and she passes him his beer and they go back to watching the movie.

Alcohol and a heavy meal were such a bad idea if she needs to try to stay awake and alert. But there was no way she could turn them down. Not without offering a deadly insult to her alien host. She knows that perfectly well. When the nice aliens offer to feed you, you either accept the offering, or find some way to back out gracefully; impossible here. And it's not even that she wants to back out gracefully. She just knows that all this food will make her sleepy, and she needs to be alert. Also vital when you're dealing with aliens. She isn't back in his good books quite yet. And a diplomatic overture spoiled in the middle is worse than one unmade.

Does he really think she wasn't sorry the moment the words were out of her mouth?

She'd just forgotten he hadn't always belonged to them.

She rubs at her eyes tiredly. Hours and hours of this, and she knows exactly nothing about team sports (professional or collegiate), airplanes, cooking, his relatives, or cars. Which pretty much eliminates small-talk, so Sammy's idea of going over to his apartment and _talking_ is pretty much not going to work. Small-talk? She doesn't have any and never has: she's been her work since she was sixteen. She sighs inwardly and focuses on the movie. Maybe just sitting and watching in silence will be enough.

After a few minutes her mind starts to drift again. "I wish _you_ people would develop a tense-less language," she mutters at the screen.

"Come again?" Cam says. She'd actually forgotten he was there for a minute.

"Nothing. Um, well, actually, I'm not sure." She isn't looking at him, but she recognizes him waiting at her. "It's pretty boring."

"It could be more interesting than this movie," he suggests.

"Oh, I bet it couldn't. I think I might almost be sure Ancient doesn't distinguish—grammatically—among past, present and future."

"You sound really definite about that," he says.

She has no idea, but the Ancient language has been obsessing her for most of the last decade, even more since they found that outpost. They actually heard back from the Atlantis Mission last year (though they still have no way to either reach them or bring them home), so she has tons of data, so she has enormous amounts to study, when she has the time. But no spoken language, and they can't talk _to_ Atlantis to ask them if they found any.

"I'd be a lot more definite if Orlin had done something useful like recited the Gettysburg Address in Ancient. Or something nice and long, with a lot of words in it. But ... guessing. If I'm right, though, it's one of the reasons we've been having so much trouble trying to assign values to some of the symbol-groups. They have a higher frequency-index because there aren't different words for "then," "now," and "soon." It's all "now." For example."

"So, no "hello" and "goodbye," either? More like "Aloha?"," Cam asks. He's smart and he thinks. If he only had decent training, she suspects he could be something formidable.

"'Hail,'" she says absently. " _Aveo_ is 'hail.'" _(Aveo, amacus.)_ "Anyway, it might help. In another decade or so, we'll be reliably certain of what their inscriptions say."

"Or unless there's a, you know, _dictionary_ in Pegasus."

"Unless it's written in English it's not going to be a lot of help. And I'm pretty sure it isn't."

"So we don't even know how to say "the cat sat on the mat?'"

" _Felas asido perstromo._ And it sits on the mat, not sat. It's probably still sitting there." She sighs.

"Maybe it's related to Schrödinger's Cat" Cam says.

"Omac said that Schrödinger's Cat didn't exist," she says regretfully. "He said our physics was stupid. Are you really watching this?"

"Engrossed," Cam says, so she settles back. She only has to pretend to pay attention, though—it's not as if it has enough of a coherent plot that she'd be able to tell what was going on even if he asked her—and her mind drifts again.

Oh, god, she hopes this works.

It's not so much that she minds utter boredom. She _does_ mind looking stupid or vulnerable or weak (a few days ago she heard a snatch of conversation in a cross-corridor: someone said something about somebody finally breaking that bitch to saddle, and whoever he was talking to said "good for Mitchell" and she doubts they were talking about Sammy), but what she really hates is being _in the wrong._ Cam said she was his cross to bear, a few days after they all got back from 694, and she supposes it's true. She knows she's useful-bordering-on-irreplaceable to the SGC, but that doesn't make things any easier for the people around her, does it? She's counted for years on her brilliance and other people's need of her to make her day-to-day life work; she doesn't go out of her way to pick fights (usually), but she doesn't have a lot of close friends. Hardly any, really. She can't tell anyone outside the SGC what it is she's doing with her life, so there isn't any basis for friendship there, really, and the friends she made inside the SGC...

Well, most of them are dead now.

She likes Cam. And the one thing she has to offer up— _words_ —is apparently useless here, because all that will work as a form of communication is silence. So she can't explain to him—not now, not ever—that she knows what it's like to be surrounded by the dead bodies of those who trusted you to keep them alive.

She thinks of the Abydos Gateroom after Apophis came.

She can't tell him she's sorry.

There are some things you should be able to pretend you don't remember.

#

They get through to the end of _Ishtar_ (finally!) and Cam goes back off to the kitchen. When he comes back, he says the ice cream will be soft enough to scoop in a couple of minutes. He's carrying a bottle—clear glass, no label, and the contents are a pale straw-color, too, like nothing she recognizes—and a couple of shot glasses.

"Now I could be in real trouble if you told anybody about this," he says warningly.

"I won't," she says. "Why?"

"Well," he says, "Uncle Jock was supposed to've stopped doing this. And if Aunt Sophie finds out he didn't, you'll hear the explosion for miles. Probably all the way up here. Plus, there's the fact he mailed me a couple of bottles."

"Your Uncle Jock has a still," she says in slow comprehension.

"My Uncle Jock has a still," Cam agrees, nodding. "And I really don't see what Aunt Soph gets so bent out of shape about, when you come to think her blackberry wine and strawberry cordial have both ribboned at the County Fair for the past twenty years, and Uncle Jock really just brews up most of this stuff to feed to the hogs."

"He feeds them whiskey?" she asks doubtfully.

"Corn whiskey. He says it's the best way to put weight on them. I think he just likes to see them drunk," Cam says. "He's got a little farm out near Mechanicsville in Darlington County. Everything certified organic."

"Including the moonshine."

"Oh, he don't sell that," Cam says. He uncorks the bottle and pours both glasses full, handing her one.

She takes it and sniffs it, wondering what proof this stuff is. They made moonshine on Abydos from _yaphetta._ She was allergic to the bread and the beer, but she could drink the distillate. It was something best done fast, though: Abydan moonshine tasted like gasoline.

She sips it, and it's like drinking absolute alcohol, but there's an elusive hint of sweetness to it. More like a memory than any actuality, really; like the sense of "sweet" you get from some of the single-malts. She sips again.

Cam is watching her. Is this a test? How does she pass?

"Well," she says, "I'm not an expert, but I've got to say, this is _definitely_ better than the stuff we brewed on Abydos."

That gets her the first real smile of the night. "You guys built a _still?_ "

"Oh yeah," she says feelingly. "You haven't had a hangover until you've had a hangover on Abydan whiskey. It burned really well, though. And you could use it to clean _anything._ "

He snorts. "And you _drank_ that stuff?"

"I was allergic to the beer and the wine, so ... yeah. I mean, that's not why I taught them to make the still, but..."

He's just shaking his head and smiling, so she tosses back the rest of her drink. Now her glass is empty and so is his. He tops them both up and goes back into the kitchen with the bottle.

She guesses she passed.

She's pretty sure Uncle Jock's moonshine will never replace Scotch, but she can feel it burn all the way down to her stomach. It's the equivalent of, oh, what? A bottle of beer? And here's another one. That's four beers. She's okay to drive on four, especially if he'll make coffee before she goes.

He comes back with the ice cream. Two enormous bowls of chocolate, but it's almost more add-ins than ice cream. Chocolate chunks and marshmallows and swirls of fudge and marshmallow whip and crushed graham cracker. Sammy left the ice cream maker here after Thanksgiving.

"Probably the wrong time of year for this, but it's good," he says.

Ice cream isn't seasonal. Hasn't been for almost a century. Wait. "S'mores are a traditional summer delicacy of the _Tau'ri_ ," she says.

"Bet you say that to all the guys," Cam says.

"Just to Teal'c."

#

Cam decides on _Teenagers From Outer Space_ next, saying it might provide useful tips. On what, it's hard to imagine.

"Disintegrator rays don't work like that," she says crossly less than five minutes in.

"Well, maybe they just disintegrate soft tissue," Cam answers helpfully.

"Leaving an articulated skeleton but destroying all the metal in their _clothes?"_ Dani demands in wild outrage. She's finished her ice cream and her second drink and she's decided that if Cam tries to throw her out now, she'll just hit him. That should work. Maybe that big lamp in the corner by the chair. He'll be out cold and she can stuff him in the closet and maybe move some furniture in front of the door and then get some sleep. Because while this movie is bad in an entirely different way than _Ishtar_ was, it's not going to keep her awake for very long. She can tell.

"You know, if you like this, we really gotta rent _The Blob._ Steve McQueen was in that."

She cudgels her brain. _"Bullit?"_ Thank god for Teal'c's obsession with crime movies.

"Right."

#

She's dimly aware that she's sort of, well, fallen over against Cam and he's got an arm around her in the same absent way she's seen him hold Sammy a hundred times. She doesn't care. His sweatshirt only smells like cotton—not horrible laundry products—and he's radiating heat like a furnace. No wonder Sammy likes sleeping with him. Dani's sure she must be. Anyone would want to.

She's not drunk. God, no. A little to drink, mostly tired, and don't forget _bored out of her skull by horrible movies._ Do they watch them all tonight? Maybe she can ask him to make coffee when this one's over. She wonders what time it is. After midnight, she's sure.

"I can't see the movie," she objects when he reaches over and eases her glasses off her face.

"Baby, you aren't watching the movie _now,_ " he says.

"Am," she protests, and he laughs.

"So, if you're watching, what's happening?"

"The Asgard show up and arrest them for violating the Protected Planets Treaty," she mumbles, and Cam hugs her.

"Go back to sleep," he says, and she does.

Because she's been forgiven.

#

She thrashes awake, struggling and flailing; someone's trying to kill her, and everyone's dead.

"Dani!" Cam says urgently.

She hiccups back a scream and opens her eyes.

He's holding her wrists.

She nods—awake, aware—and he lets go. It's dawn outside the windows. Maybe five o'clock. They're both still on the couch, tangled up in Grandma's Afghan. The television set is dark.

"Did I hurt you?" she asks.

"I ducked." There's a beat of silence. "You want to talk about it?"

"I don't actually usually remember them after I wake up." She knows he deserves more than that, though. "I've had severe nightmares ever since I was a child. They go away in stressful situations—so, you know, I won't have one during a mission. I never have. When everything calms down, they come back. That's all."

So much more than that. They were never this bad when she was a child, though she did have them. They went away almost entirely when she got to college, and she had very mild ones on Abydos. But they came back with a vengeance when she got to the SGC, and they've gotten worse ever since.

Cam just nods. He doesn't suggest counseling, or sleeping pills, or any of the other stupid quick-fixes people (like Simon) have suggested to her over the years.

"I'm sorry I woke you up," she offers. "I should have..." _Left?_ "...warned you," she finishes tiredly. "It's just, um..."

"Nobody knows you have them," he finishes.

"A couple of people." _Jack did. Janet did. Sammy, Teal'c._ "Everybody at the SGC has nightmares, Cam," she adds quietly. "But, ah, 'chronic stress-related sleep disorder'? I'm hoping to pass my next psych eval." (She wishes she was actually making a joke.)

He nods again, looking rumpled and serious, but, oh god, very, very awake. "I'm sorry," she repeats, because _this_ at least she can apologize for.

"Don't worry about it," he says. "Beautiful day. I'm betting you're not going to want to go back to sleep?"

She shakes her head. The nightmares tend to come in chains. If she goes back to sleep now, she'll just have another one.

"Okay, then." He pats her knee. "I'm gonna go out for a run before there're too many people around. When I come back, I'll fix you breakfast. Told you I would, sooner or later."

"I really just ... toast," she says, because it's kind of early in the morning to contemplate food.

"Toast it is, then," Cam says.

Cam goes out for his run and she goes down to her Jeep (found her boots first; she has no idea of when they came off) and gets her go-bag and makes herself morning-presentable and goes off to the kitchen and finds the coffee makings and sets up the pot. It's not Sumatra Mandheling (which she has to buy on-line anyway, because god knows no store in the entire state of Colorado carries it), but it's nothing to sneeze at. Starbuck's Guatemalan Casi Cielo. Lighter than her personal preference, but light-years ahead of the usual diner swill. She's on her third cup by the time Cam gets back from his run, panting and sweat-soaked, and he looks so pleased to find her still sitting here in his living room, slumped on his couch and drinking his coffee, that she isn't quite sure how to feel about it. Did he think she'd _run out on him?_

Probably.

And she'd like to, actually, because she's not sure what she's supposed to _do._ No road-maps. Not even a compass.

"Just gimme a chance to grab a shower," he says. "Then I'll make breakfast."

She's never seen the attraction of running if someone isn't actually _shooting_ at you. Sammy runs, though. She wonders if they run together sometimes.

Oh, god. Is she thinking of being _jealous_ of Sammy?

No. Never. Both Cam and Sammy should have exactly what they want. If it's each other, well, Sammy said the rules are different now. She wouldn't lie, and she wouldn't be wrong. It's true Sammy said she and Cam weren't what each other wanted when they broke off their affair. But people change. And maybe they change their minds, too. Except it's been almost a year now since Cam arrived, and while Dani knows he and Sammy are close, she doesn't really think they're close like _that._ This is, after all, her own second night of sleeping at Cam's, and god knows _they_ aren't lovers. So what if Cam and Sammy were? 

Are.

She wishes she didn't care.

#

And then he comes back and starts _cooking._ She sits at the little table in the corner of the kitchen and watches as he takes down bowls and whisks and saucepans and frying pans and starts _doing things._ About the time he starts cracking eggs into a bowl it occurs to her she may be in over her head here.

"This is toast?" she asks.

"Yup. French Toast," Cam says.

She is only letting him get away with this because she never should have said those things to him in the first place. Really. And, well, it's not as if he's just cooking for _her._

He slices a loaf of bread and puts the slices to soak in the batter and dumps sausages and bacon into the frying pan and two sticks of butter into the saucepan.

"You know," she says meditatively, "I'm thinking a breakfast like that is pretty much going to destroy any benefit you got from running."

"Evens out," Cam says. He prods the contents of the frying pan with a fork, whisks the contents of the saucepan, pours out a splash of something from a mushroom-shaped bottle into the pan, whisks some more.

"Where'd you learn to cook?" she asks. Because, actually, she's curious.

"Following Momma around in the kitchen," he says. "Daddy wasn't around a lot when I was a kid, and Momma said if I was gonna be underfoot I might as well be useful. Found out I liked it. And a lotta places I've been, you're not gonna get anything decent to eat unless you cook it yourself. Useful skill."

"Oh." She has a number of useful skills, but not that one.

He puts a griddle on the stove, tips the frying pan up, spoons grease out of it onto the griddle, then starts sifting sugar into the saucepan and whisking. When that's done, he sets it aside and begins forking the bacon out of the frying pan onto a waiting plate. Then the soaked bread goes onto the griddle. Then the sausages come out. Then it's off to the refrigerator for a big covered bowl. More prodding at the frying pan.

"Time to set the table," he says, so she does, because it's a little embarrassing to be waited on like this. Everything but plates.

Breakfast is served.

A pile of French Toast with butter and warm maple syrup. Bacon and sausage. A bowl of fresh fruit drenched in the sauce he made on the stove. Coffee and orange juice. She surprises herself with her appetite. Well, food replaces sleep, doesn't it?

And then the meal is eaten, and the dishes have been racked in the dishwasher, and it's _really_ time to go.

"You bring your work stuff?" Cam asks, as he sets the dishwasher to run.

It's such an unexpected question she has to think about it for several seconds. "No; everything's at home, but I--"

"It's Saturday, anyway. You don't need to work seven days a week. Why don't we kick back and enjoy ourselves?"

"Doing what?" she asks, trying not to sound as suspicious as she feels.

"C'mon. I'll show you."

They go back out to the living room, and she sits down on the couch while he pulls something out of the closet that she vaguely recognizes.

"That's a PlayStation," she says, and he looks surprised. "Teal'c has one," she explains.

"It _is_ a PlayStation. And _we_ are going to have some fun," Cam says.

She cringes internally, because she's watched Teal'c play on occasion. "Um, I don't actually... I mean, different people like different things, you know, and I..."

"You are awfully damned cute when you're trying to be tactful."

"--I have _never_ seen the point of these stupid games and don't we get enough violence in real life?"

He stops and looks at her, and she realizes she's ruined everything all over again and it actually makes her want to cry. Or hit something. "Just trust me," he says gently.

So she sits on the couch and waits while he gets everything hooked up and loads a game. He hands her one of the controllers. She's never actually touched one before. It looks like a pair of alien binoculars. When he shows her how to position her fingers, she revises her opinion to "alien keyboard." Left side, direction. Right side, confirmation. He picks up the other controller.

"Okay, gonna teach you _real_ meditation here. _Kel'no'reem_ has _nothing_ on Capcom."

"Who's Capcom?"

"Only the makers of _Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo,_ " he says cheerfully. "Don't worry about the storyline."

"There's a storyline?" she asks. 

"That's why I said 'don't worry about it,'" he says.

#

Three hours later the game is set to the highest speed and she is _kicking his ass._

It's incredibly peaceful.

She can't think about anything but the game. And she isn't even really thinking about that. It's moving too fast. She's just reacting. The strategy is simple—like _Go_ —and like _Go,_ it's complex and subtle and requires absolute concentration.

At least if you want to win, and she does.

"See what I mean?" Cam says, when they finally stop.

"Um ... yes." She glances at her watch, and is surprised to see how much time has passed. It's after noon.

"Lunch?" Cam suggests.

"Then I really have to go," she says, because if she doesn't, she might as well just move in here with him.

"Sure," he says. "Not that many free days. Can't let the chores build up."

She thinks of the cold and empty house she'll be going back to. Emptier, now, in an odd way, even though it's full of her things. "I really should sell it," she says, mostly to herself. No reason to keep it now.

"All the lawyering over with?" Cam asks.

"Not even close. Every time I turn around there are more papers to sign." She sighs.

"Well, then you don't have to rush into anything," Cam says, opening the dishwasher and removing plates.

Lunch is grilled bacon-cheese-and-tomato sandwiches (Cam complains about the quality of the tomatoes), with a side order of the potato salad whose recipe Sammy would apparently kill for. "The secret isn't in the ingredients," Cam tells her mysteriously, "it's in the dressing."

She doesn't care. It's good.

"You're not going to teach me to cook, you know," she warns. "Sammy tried."

"And?" he asks, grinning at her.

"It doesn't work out. Either things burn, or they come out raw, or ... sometimes they explode. And it takes too much time."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "It's just a good thing I'm here."

It is, but not, as he apparently thinks, so he can feed her. It's good that he's here because he makes Sammy happy and Teal'c likes him and the whole SGC runs more smoothly now that it's no longer waiting for SG-1 to kill its latest addition. Because he brings them back through the Gate alive. But now that everything's _okay_ she's afraid she'll say something wrong again, so she just smiles and shakes her head.

#

"You want to take these with you?" he asks, offering her the movies as she stands at the door.

"They aren't rented."

"I noticed that."

"I figured you might want to watch the other ones later."

"More fun with company," he says.

She hesitates, because how does she tell him she _liked_ sleeping with him—until she woke him up—but that he's supposed to be sleeping with Sammy? "We'll watch them next week," she says. "I really think Teal'c needs to see more musicals."

"Sounds good," he says, smiling at her. "You get here early, and maybe we'll see just how bad you are in the kitchen."

"Ask Sammy," she says, going down the steps to her car.

Kitchen, hell. She'd like to show him how bad she is in the _bedroom._ Oh, god. _What is she thinking?_ Cam is their Team Leader. She can't just think about ... what she's thinking about ... just because he's been _nice_ to her.

She really needs to start hitting the bars again. As long as everybody's properly encased in plastic—and she won't make any foolish choices this time—she'll be fine. Her second test came back okay. Only one more, and she can be completely sure.

#

She drives from Cam's house to Sammy's house. The weather's a little uncertain—and still too cold for her tastes—but it's almost May. The day is bright and clear. Sammy goes to her health club in the morning on Saturday, but it's after one by the time Dani pulls up. She's back and in the garage, working on one of her bikes. Dani comes in and sits down on a bench.

"Well?" Sammy demands.

"We only got through two of the movies, so next weekend you get to see _Reefer Madness: The Musical_ and _Attack of the Killer Tomatoes._ "

"Thanks for that," Sammy says.

"I thought I'd share my happiness," Dani says, deadpan. "Breakfast was great, by the way."

"He does do a nice one," Sammy says, unruffled. "Hand me that wrench, would you? What did you have?"

"French toast, bacon, sausage, and fresh fruit with, um, some kind of sweet sauce on it."

That actually gets Sammy's attention. "He made you his Grand Marnier sauce?" she says in awe. "Oh, you don't even want to know what's in that."

"I'm guessing Grand Marnier?"

"And half a pound of butter, and sugar," Sammy says. "No wonder it took you this long to get here."

"Well," Dani says, "actually, after that we played a video game for a couple of hours and he made lunch. _Then_ I came here."

"You played a video game," Sammy says slowly.

"It was a little like _Go._ Anyway, wasn't I supposed to be apologizing to him by doing anything he wanted?"

Sammy nods, but Dani feels somehow that she doesn't seem entirely convinced. "You played a video game," she repeats.

"Yes, Samantha," Dani says patiently. "I played a video game. PlayStation 2, actually, if there's a difference. That was what he wanted to do, so we did it. But I think everything's okay now."

"Yeah, pretty much," Sammy says, trying—unsuccessfully—to hide a smile. "So... where'd you sleep?" she asks casually.

_Sammy!_ "On the couch. Cam belongs to you, Sammy. You know: you get the advanced polite aliens, I get the crazed barbarians."

Sammy sits back on her heels. "You aren't holding off making a move on him because you think I...? I told you, that was over a long time ago. We're friends, and we always will be. But I'm not in love with him and he's not in love with me."

_I saw the two of you get out of his car together._

Sammy has never lied to her.

She can't reconcile what she saw and what she knows. Why wouldn't they be sleeping together if they could?

"You'd be good for each other," Dani says.

"We _are_ good for each other. But as friends. There's never going to be anything more between us. I was in-and-out of love with Cam Mitchell a _very_ long time ago. Not that it was exactly love in the first place."

"What was it then?" Dani asks. She can't help it.

"Oh, you know. Hot-zone hormones. And he was a really nice guy, even back then. Kept me from making a few stupid mistakes, and oh my god do I wish I'd met him before I'd met Jonas Hansen. Took me home with him when he found out I didn't have any place to go for the holidays. His family's, well ... if you ever meet them, you'll understand Cam a little better."

"I don't understand him at _all!_ " Dani says irritably.

Sammy slides under her bike. "Well, he's not that complicated. If you'd just relax and let him fuss over you, you'd make your life a lot easier. Just let him feed you, and make sure you sleep, and take you out to have some fun once in a while--"

"No!" Dani blurts out before she can stop herself.

"Hate him that much?" Sammy asks. Dani can't see her face, but Sammy sounds amused, and Dani has the impression she's losing an argument she can't remember starting.

"I don't hate him. I just don't need a keeper."

Sammy snorts. "That probably isn't what he has in mind."

"All right," Dani says, with the last of her rapidly-fraying patience, "what _does_ he have in mind?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Sammy says. "He'll probably tell you."

"Oh, just look at the time! You know, Sammy, I really enjoy these conversations of ours. And now I'm going to go home and stick my head under water for five or ten minutes and try to forget it ever happened. Okay?"

"Sure," Sammy says cheerfully.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is our Major Character (Jack) Death chapter. It's also where Cam and Dani have an ugly fight. And some walkons make misogynistic references that surprised even me. But all ends well. Except for Jack, who is still dead.


	4. APRIL 2006—MAY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 experiences a ripple effect; Dani goes back to Tegalus; Vala hijacks the wrong ship; nothing ends well but the meatloaf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings in the endnotes.

Dani spends the rest of the weekend working. Her housecleaning service is hideously expensive (Licensed, Bonded, and Insured) but she still tries to schedule their appearances for when she's home, even though she always has to retreat to her study while they clean. Nothing of a sensitive nature is ever left anywhere else in the house. The yard people come during the week—while she's away—and she never sees them, but the bushes are trimmed and the yard gets mowed. She supposes she can see about taking the roses out of the bottom of the back yard now. She's violently allergic to roses—to all flowers, really, but to roses especially—and when the hedge blooms again, she'll be in misery. There's no reason to keep the landscaping intact anymore. The house's previous owner isn't going to be coming back.

Cam calls a couple of times (Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon). She's pretty sure it's to make sure she's at home and not at the Mountain. It's slightly disturbing, because she has the feeling he's having one conversation and she's having another. She keeps waiting for him to bring up her transgression, to exact a formal apology, because shouldn't that be the last step in the process? But he never does.

And on Monday—mission on Tuesday—he's back down in her office again in the afternoon, just as if he'd never left, and she realizes for him the matter is over and done with. He smiles at her and sits on the corner of her desk and asks her what she's working on, and where they're going, and what it's going to be like. But she's careful with her answers, and cautious. She doesn't dare risk another slip of the tongue around him. It almost cost her too much.

When he leaves, she stares blindly at her computer screen for a long time. _Why does she care?_

All right. She cared because she was in the wrong. But she'd apologized, and if he'd wanted to be stupid and parochial about it, that was his business. She shouldn't have caved and catered the way she did. She should have drafted a formal written letter of apology he could accept or not: his choice.

She can't afford to care.

Everyone and everything she cares about _dies._

It's only a matter of time. Who's left by now? Only Teal'c and Sammy, really. 

So she won't care.

She's too busy to worry about her personal life, anyway. Tuesday's mission becomes a rest-of-the-week nightmare. It starts out simply enough with their scheduled mission to P4R-455. They've received a tip from the _Tok'ra_ (trying to shove them around into something again and she'd really like to know what) that Ba'al has recently abandoned the world, and they've gone to find out why, because nothing in the profile they have on him indicates that he'd just up and leave one of his possessions undefended. They don't find any answers there—the local population is equally baffled, and are begging to know when their "god" will return to them—but the real fun starts when they get back.

Because they're already there.

It's another SG-1 from another universe—which General Landry figures out when _they_ show up—and Sammy has barely come up with the theory that the other them were sent here because their wormhole crossed a space-time singularity (Dani debriefs Alternate Teal'c: in his universe, the _Goa'uld_ have already been defeated and the Jaffa have embraced freedom under the leadership of Master Bra'tac) when ... more SG-1s start arriving.

General Landry turns some of them back—the singularity is here, not wherever-they-are, so until they step through the Stargate they're actually still in their own universes, even though they can talk to this SGC—but he can't turn them _all_ back. Some of them are under fire. It would mean their deaths.

By twelve hours later there are _sixteen different versions_ of SG-1 in the SGC, and the singularity is still active.

Some of them want to know where General Hammond is. About half of them want to know where General O'Neill is, and that hurts. The rest seem to recognize General Landry.

A couple of the teams have different members.

Janet.

Oh, god, one of the Teams General Landry has to let come through is Martouf and Janet and Teal'c and somebody it takes Dani several minutes to recognize. Jonas Quinn. He's Kelownan; five years ago SG-1 had a diplomatic mission to Kelowna that ended in disaster. If Teal'c hadn't been with her to zat their experimental _naquadriaah_ device out of existence when it went into overload, none of them would have survived. The Kelownans are still pissed.

General Landry lets her and Sammy have a few minutes with Alternate Janet before she takes Jonas off to interview him (she usually does the Teal'cs, but she has the most knowledge of Kelowna of anyone here). Like all the Teams that have come through, Janet is baffled about how and why she's ended up here, and doesn't really understand (at first) that she isn't _home._ She was on a mercy mission to Abydos—part of the famine relief team—when she left to return to her SGC.

"But Dani, honey," she says, sounding bewildered. "What are you doing here? Why are you in uniform?"

"This isn't your universe, Janet," Dani says carefully.

She and Sammy explain, and then Janet explains: Dani never left Abydos. Apophis came there, but they rescued Sha're and Skaara from Chulak, and she returned to Abydos with them to live. She consults for the SGC, but she has four children now.

"But where's Sammy?" Dani asks. Why isn't Sammy on Janet's SG-1?

"There will be time enough for this later," General Landry says. "Dr. Jackson, please find out what you can from Mr. Quinn and then take him to the holding area."

Dani nods, and conducts Jonas to an interrogation room. The interview is over quickly—Jonas has joined SG-1 as part of an arrangement with Kelowna to share their _naquadriaah_ technology—and the other details of his timeline match hers reasonably well. Considering that in Jonas's universe, she's living on Abydos and has _children._

She asks Jonas about Sammy, but he doesn't recognize the name. He smiles, and apologizes, and says he doesn't know everyone at the SGC yet. He's only been on the team a few weeks.

"Okay, come on," she says. "Let's get you settled in."

"Dr. Jackson," Jonas says. "I'm kind of wondering. Do you know where I am here?" The him-that's-here, he means.

"I'm pretty sure you're still on Kelowna, Jonas," she says. "I met you there a few years ago, but things really didn't work out."

They go down the hall to the Multi-Purpose Room designated as the holding area for Dani Jacksons (and by extension, all other Alternate SG-1 cultural specialists). She's been in there a couple of times. It's disconcerting, to say the least. Some of the Other Hers don't wear glasses. One is a blonde with long hair worn in a bun on top of her head (why the hell would she dye her hair?) Another has her hair cut almost to crewcut length. Every time she comes down here, there seem to be more of them. Her. Whatever. And it's incredibly annoying that she isn't able to stay and _talk_ to them. At least to some of them. Not that any of them can be of any help in solving the current problem (that's Sammy's department) but just ... because.

When she goes into the room this time with Jonas, though, there's someone new. A man.

"Robert?" 

Robert Rothman died years ago.

He's in uniform—tan BDUs—wearing an SG-1 patch.

"Dani," he says, getting up. He doesn't look as sandbagged as she does, but then, he's been sitting in a room full of ... _her_ ... for a while, she guesses.

"When did you get here?" she asks. 

He smiles. "About an hour ago. It's kind of a shock. Well, not only everything, but ... seeing you alive again."

"Um ... me?"

"You died on P3X-888 when you were infested with an aboriginal _Goa'uld_." 

"That's nice," she says blankly. "And, uh...?"

"I took your place on SG-1. It was the only way I could think of to honor your memory."

This is beyond weird.

"You're the one that belongs here, aren't you?" Robert asks.

She nods.

"So how are you and General O'Neill getting along?" Robert asks. "Because if you're still alive..."

"Oh, Jack's still dead," she answers pleasantly, because the next stop after "weird" is "surreal."

"Look, um, excuse me, Danielle, I really hate to be a bother, but do you think we could get some more coffee in here?" One of her Alternate Universe counterparts walks up to her and smiles shyly—it's the long-haired version of her—and Dani realizes in disbelief that _the woman is wearing makeup._ "I guess the coffee thing is pretty universal," Other Her adds. And giggles.

"Uh," Dani says. "Yeah. Right." She waves—at the bizarrely-feminized her, at Robert, at the roomful of _others,_ and flees.

She grabs the first airman she sees and tells him to for god's sake keep _coffee_ coming into the room where they're holding the Dr. Jacksons.

#

They're all—General Landry, the _real_ SG-1—sitting around the Briefing Room table. Sammy is giving a Science Lecture. Dani's trying to pay attention. General Landry has turned back over fifty Gate Teams from Alternate Universes since two o'clock this afternoon, and, needless to say, all _their_ ongoing missions have been scrubbed.

To seal the singularity, according to Sammy, they need to blow it up. That will keep more Alternate Universe Teams from coming through. It will also strand the ones here that are already here, and a number of them (Dani knows) are passionate about needing to get home. In some of their universes, the war against the _Goa'uld_ is going badly. In others, the _Goa'uld_ have been defeated, but a new enemy, the Ori, has arisen, and they're apparently even worse.

They have a bomb that will deliver enough force, Sammy thinks; it's being flown in from Area 51. But because of the physics involved (it's four o'clock in the morning by now; Dani tunes out most of the explanation), they can't get it there.

"Fortunately, Colonel Carter, I think we can," General Landry says. "Just a few days ago, the Asgard resumed contact with us. I was able to contact Thor a few hours ago and ask him to join us."

The Asgard are back?

There's a flash of white light—an Asgard beam transporter—and Thor is standing in the Briefing Room.

"Greetings, General Landry, Colonel Carter, Doctor Jackson, Teal'c."

"Thor, this is Colonel Cameron Mitchell, the new leader of SG-1," General Landry says.

Thor regards Cam and blinks slowly. "I see. Where is Colonel O'Neill?"

"He's dead, Thor," Sammy says.

Thor blinks again. "I am sorry," he says. "I will miss him. But tell me how I may assist you?"

She's been awake for almost twenty-four hours, working non-stop in an environment of increasing unreality. And now she's looking at Thor—Supreme Commander of the Asgard Fleet—back after a two-year silence—and she doesn't know where he was, and this isn't the time to ask, and if he'd just showed up a few months sooner...

Sammy is explaining about the singularity and the rift between universes, and Thor is saying they're aware of it, and the Asgard will provide the time dilation device which will allow the payload to reach the singularity. And since the singularity must be closed immediately—before it widens to the point it cannot be closed at all—the Asgard will also install Asgard hyperdrive engines on _Prometheus_ to enable them to reach their destination in a timely fashion.

"Ah... won't that take a while?" Cam asks.

"Significantly less time than it would take your ship to reach its destination using its current means of propulsion," Thor says primly.

They have _Goa'uld_ engines in both _Prometheus_ and _Odyssey_ now. They weren't meant to power a ship of that size—they swiped them out of captured _tel'taks_ —so the ships are (so she understands) comparatively slow. 

"We appreciate all your help," General Landry says. He should. Earth's been trying to get its hands on Asgard hyperdrive technology for years. "I'll let Colonel Pendergast know to expect you, and to give you his full cooperation."

Thor nods his head in acknowledgement. "I will notify you when the upgrades are complete. My ship is already in communication with _Prometheus_." There's another flash of light, and he's gone. In his place, there's a piece of machinery.

"That's it," Sammy says. "I'd better get it down to my lab. As soon as the Gatebuster gets here, I can connect them to each other and start running simulations to calculate the optimal launch-distance."

"I'm told it will be a few hours yet before the plane lands. Until then, I suggest you all get some rest. We'll need to launch immediately once Thor's finished upgrading the ship," General Landry says.

They all stand.

"That was ... a shock," Cam says slowly.

"What were you expecting?" Dani asks. She knows she sounds irritable, but that's mainly because she's not really sure what she's supposed to be feeling right now. Maybe after she's gotten some sleep.

"Well ... pants," Cam says sheepishly.

"The Asgard don't wear clothes."

"Okay. Got that now. C'mon, let's get bedded down."

#

They take over a four-bunk room up on Level 14. With so many extra people to fit in right now everything's a little tight. She wakes up a couple of hours later when an airman comes to get Sammy. But none of the rest of them is summoned, so she goes back to sleep.

At 0730, she's roused from sleep and summoned to the Conference Room. The retrofit is done.

When she gets there, one of the Alternate SG-1s is there too. The one in black BDUs—that should mean they were the first Team through the Gate. None of the other teams was wearing black.

Thor is there, too.

"The improvement to _Prometheus's_ systems makes it possible to operate the vessel for short periods with a very small crew," he's saying. "There is a strong possibility that the vessel will not survive close exposure to the singularity."

"Been there, done that," she hears her counterpart mutter.

"For that reason," General Landry says, "I've decided to send you alone, rather than risking the entire crew of _Prometheus_ on this mission." ( _Prometheus_ normally carries 250 crewmembers. Probably just as well.) "The—other—SG-1 has volunteered to act as your backups."

"Seeing as we're probably responsible for this mess in the first place. Somehow," Alternate Cam says. He smiles at her engagingly, and winks. Dani walks over to the table slowly and sits down.

"We don't really know that, Cam, um, Colonel," Sammy says. "We're not really sure how this started."

"But we know how we're going to end it," Alternate Sammy says. She looks awfully cheerful for somebody who's about to be marooned here. Alternate Teal'c just looks pissed, though.

"Are you ready to proceed?" Thor asks.

Oh, god, she hopes there's more coffee on board.

There's going to be two of her.

#

Thor beams them to the bridge of _Prometheus,_ remains long enough to wish them luck, and beams away. Sammy plots a course for the singularity. It will take them twelve hours to reach it, but it would have taken days with the old engines, she says.

"You look pretty beat," Alternate Sammy says. "Why don't you get some rest? I can handle things here."

"Sure," Sammy says. "I guess I am pretty tired."

Dani turns to her counterpart. "You want to go find the galley? I really need coffee."

Her counterpart smiles coolly. "Sure."

#

Everything goes fine for the next twelve hours, until they get to the singularity. But Dani can't shake the feeling something is _off_. Alternate Dani is too distant; Alternate Cam is too friendly (in the wrong way); but she puts it down to tiredness, strangeness, the shock of having the Asgard come back too late.

Then the Black SG-1 turns on them.

Just before they can deploy the warhead to seal the singularity, the Black Team hijacks _Prometheus_ and imprisons them.

#

"Ow," Cam says, rubbing his head. They zatted him and then banged him off a couple of walls before locking them all up in here.

"Are you all right?" Sammy asks.

"Been better," Cam mutters darkly.

"I knew there was something wrong with them," Dani says dolefully. "I just didn't know what it was."

"Yeah, well, next time you want to mention it up front?" Cam says. She winces. "Sorry, sorry," he says. "So. They're going to Atlantis to steal the ZPM. Why?"

Alternate Cam said they were taking a three-week detour. Sammy has computed that with their new engines, they can reach Pegasus Galaxy in three weeks.

Sammy frowns. "Why would they need a ZPM that badly?"

Dani thinks hard. She interviewed so many alternates... "They need to power the Antarctic defenses," she says at last. It's the only thing she can think of. "Some of the alternates have defeated the _Goa'uld_ , but they're fighting something called the Ori, and I think this SG-1 comes from one of those universes. Apparently the Ori are a rogue offshoot of the Ascended—Orlin's people—and they're pretty powerful. But I bet Ancient technology would stop them."

"If they take Atlantis's ZPM, though, aren't the Atlanteans in a lot of trouble?" Cam asks.

"Well, it's powering Atlantis's defenses now, according to their mission report, so if it's removed, the city will be completely vulnerable." Sammy explains, but Dani almost doesn't hear her. She's just realized something. _Prometheus_ is going to Atlantis. It will get there in three weeks.

They'll have two-way communication with Atlantis now.

Assuming the ship isn't destroyed, they get home alive, and, oh yeah, they ever get out of this cell.

"Dani?"

"Yeah. Listening."

"Good. Because it's time to think of a way out of here. Ideas, anyone?"

"Given the unique circumstance we find ourselves in, it is possible to anticipate their actions and reactions. All we must do is think like them," Teal'c says after a moment's thought.

"Well, that shouldn't be too hard," Sammy says sourly.

Teal'c disables the security camera. Cam figures the Black Team knows they're planning to escape—because _they_ would—and so will take the first opportunity they present to slip a ringer in to find out how they plan to escape, now that they can't spy on them directly, so they can seal off whatever escape route they come up with.

"So if any of us leaves...?" Dani says.

"The one who comes back is probably not going to be the same one who left," Cam says.

"So who goes?" Sammy asks.

"And that would be me," Cam says. "I know me. I'm not going to be expecting subtlety from ... me."

For obvious reasons, there's no intercom in the brig. He goes over and starts pounding on the door. He has to bang for quite some time—at least half an hour—before the door opens.

"Your antics do not entertain me, Cameron Mitchell," Alternate Teal'c says. "You are fortunate Colonel Mitchell insisted you be fed."

"Oh, is _that_ why you're here?" Cam asks, feigning cheerful interest. "Well, that's real great, but I really need to talk to your boss, so why don't you run along and let him know that ol' Shaft wants to have a few words?"

Alternate Teal'c shoves Cam back into the cell, tosses a sack at him, and closes the door.

"Think he'll tell him?" Dani asks.

"He will," Teal'c says.

Cam opens the sack. It contains bottles of water and MREs. "Tasty," he says in disgust.

About ten minutes later, Teal'c comes back and takes Cam away. And about fifteen minutes after that, Cam is back again. Teal'c shoves him into the cell and he goes sprawling.

Not their Cam. (If this plan is working.)

"We were right," he says. "They're after the ZPM."

"Weren't you able to talk them out of it?" she asks. Because that was Cam's ostensible reason for wanting to talk to his double.

"Oh hell no, honey," not-Cam replies. "Believe me, I tried. "Sam, time to get us out of here if we're getting."

Sammy goes over to the control panel and begins working it loose.

"You sure you can do this?" not-Cam asks.

"I've broken out of locked compartments on the _Prometheus_ more times than I can count," Sammy answers absently. "I built this thing, remember? Opening the door is the easy part—it's taking the ship back that'll be tricky."

Not that they're planning to do that, though that's what not-Cam thinks is their plan. He thinks she and Sammy are heading for the engine room to disable the ship while he and Teal'c head for the armory. In reality, they're breaking into a second armory, and they circle back around in an ambush.

She gets to zat herself. That's both satisfying and a little weird.

Then they take the Bridge, and find _their_ Cam (in his underwear, in a closet, although it probably isn't called that if it's on a ship), and lock up all four of the Black Team—separately—in cells where Sammy has disabled the power relay that runs through the walls. Not that Sammy really thinks any of them besides Alternate Her stands a good chance of figuring out how to get around _Prometheus's_ systems, but why take chances?

"You would have done it too," Alternate Dani says to her, as they usher her into her solitary cell. "You'll be willing to do anything, when the Ori come here."

"No," Dani says. "Never."

Alternate Dani just smiles bitterly.

#

"So now we go back and set off the bomb," Sammy says, when the last of them are sealed in.

"I don't think so," Cam says thoughtfully. "Mirror Me wouldn't have planned this heist and set all of this up if they didn't have some way of getting the ZPM _back._ "

"To their own universe," Sammy says, her eyes going wide with realization. "They must have a way of reversing the dimensional gateway in order to get back."

"Want to bet it's in the computers somewhere?" Cam says. "I'm betting General Landry's gonna be really glad to get rid of about five dozen houseguests."

#

The answer was in _Prometheus's_ computers, just as Cam thought. Open a wormhole from the SGC back to P4R-455, then toss an equivalent explosion to the one Alternate Sammy had used to make the first dimensional rupture at it. The others had been planning to do it from Abydos; it's so close to Earth, astronomically speaking, that the wormhole would have traveled a nearly-identical line.

"Hey, Shaft! When the time comes ... cut the green one."

The black-clad SG-1 is the last group to go through the Gate. All the others are gone—back to their own universes, their own battles. Robert and Janet hugged her goodbye.

"What the hell did that mean?" Cam grumbles, as the other SG-1 walks through the Event Horizon and vanishes. The whole SGC seems to breathe a sigh of relief as the wormhole collapses. Only them here now. The people who belong here.

"Guess you'll find out," she says. "Or ... maybe not. Depending on whether our reality runs like theirs."

She really hopes it doesn't. She doesn't want to become the kind of person who can do the things her other self was apparently willing to do.

"We're ready to go whenever you say, sir," Cam says, turning to General Landry.

They'll _still_ need to fly the _Prometheus_ out to the singularity and close it, but at least it won't be getting bigger. And offworld missions can resume.

"You may be ready to go, but the bomb isn't," General Landry grumbles. "Go home, SG-1. I'm really tired of seeing you around here."

She isn't really sure whether he's making a joke or not.

#

"So was that the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you, or what?" Cam asks cheerfully.

They're all—even Teal'c—at Cam's apartment. She's not completely sure how she and Teal'c got caught up in the great exodus, or why they're all _here._ The last day she clearly remembers with sharp bench-marking clarity—the last day on which she _signed in to work_ —was Tuesday, and now it's Sunday afternoon, and the sky is blue with little white clouds, and the sun is shining and the grass is green and everything is so _normal_ it's a little frightening. Because _normal_ —as she's known for years—is not a thing she is or does.

They've all called Cassie and talked to her. Cassie's at the Mall. Pretty self-reliant. Cam invited her to come by later, for dinner, but she says she has other plans. She'll be starting at UCLA this September, and Dani only hopes she and Sammy can be here in June to see her graduate from High School. That would be nice.

Sammy wanders through the apartment throwing open windows. Cam's in the kitchen seeing what there is to make sandwiches with. Teal'c's seeing what the TiVo has harvested. Dani's really the only one available to answer the question.

"Pretty weird," she says, going into the kitchen to make the conversation easier. "I don't know if it's the weirdest. Hard to tell any more."

"Come again?" Cam says. He's rummaging in his refrigerator, setting things out on the counter. Some he investigates suspiciously before tossing into the garbage.

"A lot of weird things have happened to me over the years. I've died a few times, been to two alternate realities, devolved to a primitive state of being, been turned into a robot, been trapped in a virtual reality. So, okay, this was a little odd—especially seeing a whole room full of other versions of _me_ —but I'm not quite sure how to rate it."

Cam grins at her. "You've got a rating system?"

"Um... sort of. You get points for if you're arrested when you walk back into the SGC. That kind of thing."

The grin gets wider. "You think this potato salad's still good?" He offers her a bowl.

She sniffs it suspiciously. "I'd eat it," she says. 

Cam still looks dubious. "Baby, I'm pretty sure you'd say that if it were actually climbing out of the bowl." He sets it on the counter.

"He called me "honey,'" she says, remembering. _("Oh hell no, honey. Believe me, I tried.")_ "The other one."

Cam looks startled, and his eyes narrow. "He did _what?_ "

"In the cell," she amplifies. She regards him assessingly. "Cam," she says carefully, wanting to get this right, "you call me 'baby' all the time. You call Sammy 'babe.' What's the difference between 'baby' and 'babe' and 'honey?'" Because he doesn't like the fact that Alternate Cameron called her "honey." Why?

"Well, 'babe,' you'd call, let's say, your cousin 'babe,' if you were close," Cam says, thoughtfully. He's thinking, she knows, about things that are second-nature to him; his own instinctive cultural patterns; trying to figure them out well enough to explain them. "Or a friend."

"You and Sammy are friends," Dani agrees, watching him. He's watching her, too.

"Right. And 'honey,' well, that's just being polite. But not too friendly. 'Course, sometimes it can be the other way."

"Too friendly but not polite?" she asks.

"Yup," Cam says. "Depends on how you mean it."

She suspects she knows how Alternate Cam meant it. She frowns. Better make the time to find some ethnographic studies on the American South. She should have done that months ago.

"Which leaves the fact that you don't call me either of those things," she says steadily.

"No," Cam says quietly.

An intimate form of address; pet-names (nonce-names, nick-names, eke-names) always are. Not the form used for female friends-or-kin; not the form used for female strangers. That really only leaves one. She shakes her head.

"No, Cam." _I can't be that to you._

He's smiling just a little now. "No?"

She shakes her head again.

"Well, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do, and I gotta do what I gotta do," he says. "But I told you before. Nothing you do is gonna change anything."

She turns around and walks out of the kitchen, back into the lying normal living room filled with lying normal daylight. Sammy and Teal'c are sitting on the couch, arguing—as much as Teal'c ever argues—about what to watch.

Cam wanted to know what the weirdest thing that ever happened to her was?

This.

She thinks about last Saturday wistfully. Won't be doing that again. And more than missing it, she hates the thought she's going to miss it. She could have it just for the asking. Just by showing up. And then something beyond her control would take it away, and she'd miss it even more for having had it.

She goes to the closet for her coat.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Sammy demands (quietly), closing a hand over her wrist. Dani actually jumps; too preoccupied to notice Sammy's approach.

"Home."

"Oh, no. You are going to come over here and sit down on that couch and help me wrestle the TiVo away from Teal'c."

"I can't."

Sammy steps in close and lowers her voice. "Dani, I have watched you turn yourself inside-out for the past two years. Yeah, it really sucks that Thor showed up too late to save Colonel O'Neill's life. But we've all had a rough week—and, frankly, the odds are still as bad as they ever were when we take _Prometheus_ out in a day or so to seal that singularity. We deserve a chance to kick back without worrying about where you are and what you're doing."

She glances past Sammy's shoulder. Cam is still in the kitchen. "Sammy, I _can't_ stay. I asked Cam a question."

Sammy looks puzzled, but intrigued. "I didn't hear any yelling," she offers.

Dani grimaces. "I asked him why he called me "baby" all the time."

"And he told you."

"Pretty much."

Sammy manages to look relieved and exasperated and sympathetic and amused all at the same time. "And I can't believe you didn't have the slightest clue."

"Sammy, it's _Cam,_ " Dani hisses.

Sammy laughs, and pats her on the shoulder. "Yes, it's _Cam._ And you want to know something? He doesn't actually feel any differently about you now than he did, oh, last July. So come back to the couch, sit down, and at least _pretend_ to relax—because if you don't, I'm going right into that kitchen to talk to Cam, and you are _not_ going to be happy with the results. And from now on, don't ask any questions you don't want the answers to."

It's really impossible to argue with Sammy when she gets like this unless Dani wants to turn this into a full-scale brawl that will actually make Sammy lose her temper. And she's had enough of SG-1 mad at her lately.

July?

"I am most gratified that you have chosen to remain in our company, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c says, when she sits down.

"Oh, um, me too," she says.

#

If she expects Cam to behave any differently that evening, she's disappointed. He's just the same as he ever was. They make sandwiches (he throws out the potato salad) and surf through the highlights of the TiVoed week, and Sammy and Dani go through their accumulated emails (everything that can be accessed from their laptops, at least), and later Cam makes ham steaks with red-eye gravy and cornbread and black-eyed peas for dinner, and a pineapple upside-down cake for dessert. (He points out that it's a safe and easy menu, since most of the ingredients are either canned or dried, or can be kept on hand for several days. In Dani's opinion, cooking is cooking.) Between dinner and dessert, they watch _Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,_ and just as usual, Sammy is curled up under Cam's arm.

Dani wonders if she misheard him, misunderstood Sammy, or is just losing her mind. Maybe all three. She doesn't _want_ Cam to love her. She doesn't want him to hate her, either. She isn't sure what she wants.

_"And from now on, don't ask any questions you don't want the answers to."_

Unfortunately, it's usually her job.

#

Graham—he's General Landry's personal aide now, and as far as Dani can tell, never sleeps—phones Cam during dessert. The new Gatebuster has arrived ahead of schedule, and their downtime is being cut short. General Landry expects to see them back at the Mountain tomorrow morning, bright and early.

"No rest for the wicked," Cam groans, after he tells them the news.

"Nor for the virtuous," Teal'c says pedantically.

"C'mon, T," she says, getting up. "I'll drive you back to Base."

#

"You seemed preoccupied this evening, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c says as they drive.

"Did it show?"

"Indeed. It is always distressing to be confronted with simulacrums of one's true self."

_Teal'c thinks I'm upset by seeing Alternate Mes, Sammy thought it was the Asgard coming back—until I told her._

"It was weird."

"The perception of the experience will fade with time. As I have said before, ours is the only reality of consequence."

"You know, Teal'c, out there, there are at least sixteen other Teal'cs saying exactly the same thing."

"Perhaps." He'll never admit she's right.

She drops him off inside the third checkpoint—he can walk in from there—and drives back down the long winding road.

Jack left letters for Teal'c and Sammy, too. She wonders what was in theirs. Absolution? Almost certainly. But what else? He'd told her to have a good life. 

But he didn't tell her _how._

#

By nine o'clock Monday morning they're heading off toward, if not certain death, then at least mortal peril. It's rather soothing. Cam is all business, and she's functioning (as she so often does) as Sammy's extra pair of hands. Four people (one of them an archaeologist) to run a battle cruiser with a normal complement of 250 is ridiculous, but the Asgard technology makes it barely possible. And Thor has apparently also agreed to retrofit _Odyssey_ with the new engines as well. There's a new ship being built—the _Daedalus_ —which will incorporate Asgard technology throughout, including Asgard beaming technology. Nice to have, but it's not as if they'll ever be able to take it apart and see how it works. From what she's picked up from listening to Sammy over the years, Asgard technology is too far ahead of theirs for them to retroengineer it. Still.

"Okay, here's the tricky part."

Cam says flying _Prometheus_ is just like flying a really big 302. She doesn't know whether he's telling the truth, or just trying to make her feel better. But he seems to be good at it.

Sammy's at the Weapons Console, preparing to launch their bomb-and-time-dilation-device. Teal'c's manning the shields. They're going to ring the bomb out through their shields to the launch point. If they drop their shields this close to the singularity to launch it conventionally, they're instantly dead.

She doesn't have anything to do, so she's looking out the windows.

It's beautiful. You can't see the black hole itself, but you can see all the matter spiraling in toward it, like water swirling down a drain. Light and gravity and time and other things that shouldn't be sucked and swirled are going into the black hole too, but all she can see is the swirl of silvery dust. Which is bigger than it looks from here, because some of the bright points in it are stars.

The ship creaks and groans as if it's made of wood instead of ... well, whatever it's made of. The silver swirl gets quickly larger as they approach.

"Sam! Are we close enough yet?" Cam asks. He has to raise his voice because the whole ship is moaning as if it's in pain.

"No!" Sammy says. "You have to get closer!"

"Now?" Cam asks a few seconds later.

"No!"

"Do you remember the part where Thor told us how getting sucked into this thing and torn apart would be a bad idea? Because--"

It fills the whole window now. The accretion disk? Yes, that's it.

"Now!"

And now Cam is trying to fly them _out_ of the gravity well, instead of into it, and if Dani thought the ship was making noise before, well, it's making ten times more now. Sirens keep going off—just for a few seconds, until somebody shuts them down—and the whole ship is vibrating madly.

"This-- is not-- working--" Cam says. It sounds like he's talking through gritted teeth, as if he's trying to pull _Prometheus_ away from the black hole by sheer strength of will.

"Open a hyperdrive window!" Sammy says.

_"Here?"_ From the sound of Cam's voice, you're not supposed to do that.

"It's our only chance! Unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a universe run by Muppets!"

Dani starts to turn around, when she sees the familiar shimmer of the hyperspace window form right in front of them. There's a single moment of ghostly silence and stillness as Cam cuts power to the subspace engines and the ship stops fighting the pull of the black hole, then the black hole's own gravity pulls them through into hyperspace.

"Okay," Cam says a moment later. "That was officially close."

Sammy gets to her feet and sighs deeply. "Let's see how much of the ship is left in one piece."

Made it through another one.

#

There are leaks in several of the compartments. They seal off more than half the decks: some have no air at all by now, some are simply what Sammy calls _compromised,_ and some are perfectly pressure-tight but filled with toxic gas from one or another of the ship's ruptured internal systems. Sammy doesn't want to run the hyperdrive at more than half power. But they'll certainly be able to get home safely.

They take another pass by the singularity. It's gone now. All that's left is a new nebula.

"I christen thee the Sam Carter Nebula," Cam says, gazing out at it. "Anybody got a bottle of champagne?"

"There isn't even a bottle of beer on board," Sammy says. "But I think there's ice cream. And I'm pretty sure we won't have to put on space suits to get to it."

They don't.

After ice cream Cam points out they've got a twenty-hour run back to Earth and suggests some of them should get some sleep. He can fly the ship, and so can Sammy, and when they get back to Earth, they'll just ring up a skeleton crew for _Prometheus_ to return her to drydock at Nellis before ringing down to Cheyenne Mountain.

"I don't suppose you could just ring me down to my house on the way home?" Dani asks. "I feel like I haven't seen it in _months._ "

"Think the neighbors might notice," Cam says. "Anyway, I bet we're all due some downtime after this."

"Think again," Dani says darkly. " _I_ bet our next mission is already on your desk."

Cam laughs, and waves over his shoulder. "I'll wake you guys in six."

"G'night, Cam," Sammy says, walking out with Teal'c.

Okay, it's logical. She and Teal'c can't pilot the ship. It makes sense to have one of them awake on each shift. She still thinks Sammy manipulated the situation, though. But every instinct tells her to trust Cam not to do anything ... awkward. She sits down in the copilot's chair. "Coffee?" she says.

"In a little while." He yawns and stretches. "Nothing like being alive."

"I've always preferred it," she says. She looks out the windows. Nothing much to see right now. Hyperspace is just sort of ... glowy. Sammy says it would look different if you could see eleven dimensions instead of three.

"So what's being dead like?" Cam asks idly.

"The actual "dead" part?"

"Uh-huh."

She thinks for a moment. "Don't remember a thing about it. Dying, now. I hate that."

"How'd you die?" Cam asks.

"Don't you know?"

"Slipped my mind," he says, turning his head to smile at her.

Maybe it did and maybe it didn't. Her job is to keep him awake and alert, though; she knows that.

"Um... let me see. Three times by staff-weapon. Once in a mine cave-in. Once from withdrawal from the device we found on P4X-347—I'm not sure if that counts, because I was only flatlined for a few minutes."

"Dead is dead," Cam says agreeably.

"Pretty much. Unless there's a sarcophagus around. Or you run into some friendly Nox. But as a general rule, you want to avoid the sarcophagus. It can have nasty side effects."

"Makes the _Goa'uld_ what they are?"

"That's what the _Tok'ra_ say." It also made her what she was on a memorably ghastly occasion, so she'd like to get off this subject. She hunts for another one. "What are you doing?"

"Right now?"

"Yeah."

"Pretty much nothing. Watching the board for warning lights. We're in hyperspace and the course is set. We drop out in two hours to run a system check and to make sure we haven't sprung any new leaks anywhere, then we jump to hyperspace for another two hours. And so on until you go wake up Sam."

"Sounds ... boring."

"Trust me, baby, up where there's nothing to breathe, boring is _good._ "

There's that word again. She's been hearing it for months without knowing what it meant to him. Maybe it means something else as well. Because Cam isn't stupid. He's not smart like Sammy or smart like her, but he isn't an annoying idiot. He listens. He pays attention.

He _cannot_ be in love with her.

"Okay," she says. "I'm bored. So we're good?"

"We're great," Cam says. "How's that Ancient stuff coming along? Any of those other "yous" able to help you out there?"

She shakes her head. "Not really. I didn't get enough time to talk to them to find out what they knew. I thought they'd all be alike, and ... some of them were so different. Were yours?" She didn't see much of the Alternate Camerons. Everybody was too busy.

"Naw. All pretty much alike. Except the one we had to lock up. You know, I bet he had a beard before he came here and shaved it off. I really do."

He's finally made a popular culture reference she gets. _Star Trek._ The Evil Alternate Universe Spock had a beard. "You'd look awful with a beard," she says musingly.

"You think so?" he asks, as if much struck by the thought. "Because, you know, I was kinda thinking about growing one. I thought it would make me look, you know, rakish and dangerous."

"Oh, god, Cam," she says, startled into laughter. "Just carry a bigger gun."

"C'mon," he says, trying to look hurt and failing miserably. "You don't think I'm dangerous?"

"I think you're terrifying," she assures him lightly. "Now if you don't want coffee, _I_ do."

"Yeah, okay," he says. "You want to see if they've got any cookies down there, too? Nothing like blowing up a singularity to make you work up an appetite."

They drink coffee and eat cookies, and talk about nothing in particular—plans for Sammy's upcoming birthday; what to buy Cassie to furnish her dorm room; whether they'll _ever_ get funding for Commissary staff on the graveyard shift—until it's time for the first drop-out.

That's when they hear the distress call.

_"Help ... require assistance ... have failed ... lost power to ... Repeat, stranded in..."_

"English?" Cam says, baffled.

"Oddly enough, a lot of people do speak it out here," Dani says absently. The message is too garbled for her to place the accent. "The _Tok'ra_ , just to begin with. And the _Goa'uld_ —although they don't go in much for distress calls. Anybody who found them would be likely to finish them off."

"Well, let's go," Cam says. "Whoever it is, we can't just leave them there. Go wake up Sam and Teal'c."

It's a good plan, and the right choice. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out.

#

They trace back the distress signal and find a _ha'tak_ and a _tel'tak_ lying dead in space. The _ha'tak_ has suffered significant damage. Sammy scans both ships and finds no life-signs, but there are enough internal shields in place in the _ha'tak_ that she can't be sure there's nobody there alive. They hail the ship and get no response.

"We really need to check it out," Cam says reluctantly.

"I agree," Teal'c says. "There may be Jaffa on board who wish to embrace freedom."

"Okay," Cam says. "Let's cowboy up. Dani, get a gun and a radio out of the weapons locker. I want you to stay in touch with us the entire time we're over there. Somebody has to be able to work the rings from this end in case of emergency."

"Right," she says.

Which is fine. Until—as she's standing beside the ring platform—a Kull Warrior rings onboard, knocks her unconscious, and steals the ship. Only it isn't a Kull Warrior. It's a woman in a Kull Warrior suit. A woman named Vala.

They really don't get on well.

Vala wants the operational codes for the ship. Dani didn't actually know there were any, so at least she can't tell Vala what they are, and she says so. Vala doesn't believe her. Dani finds out about several new and interesting uses for the ribbon weapon as she's tied to a chair on the Bridge—apparently it can heal as well as harm, though the burns hurt as much as they ever did—and that Vala claims to be a _former Goa'uld_ host. By the time Dani can get free of the chair, get her hands on a zat, and zat Vala unconscious (after a brawl), Vala has not only broken _Prometheus's_ access codes, but changed them, programmed a jump to hyperspace, and locked up the system again. 

Vala's a prisoner in the ship's brig, but Dani's a prisoner on the ship.

She tries explaining to Vala (over the intercom) that the ship she's stolen is damaged and will probably _explode_ if Vala doesn't let her take it back to where Vala stole it from. Vala is unimpressed, spinning Dani a story about needing _Prometheus_ to rescue her people, which—considering everything—Dani doesn't really believe.

When _Prometheus_ lands, Dani puts on Vala's Super Soldier armor (without the helmet) and goes out to talk to Vala's people. And just as quickly discovers there _are_ no people (nor do the nonexistant people need rescuing). Vala apparently was going to sell whatever ship she turned up with for _naquaadah_ , and her buyers aren't really happy the deal's off. Dani zats both of them and runs back inside, but to make matters worse, they're now being strafed by Death Gliders.

And she can't fly the ship.

The only thing she can do is let Vala out of the brig so _she_ can fly it.

Vala wants to know what Dani did with her buyers. And the _naquaadah_. "Do you have any idea how much that stuff is _worth?_ " Vala demands, when it becomes clear from Dani's silence that the _naquaadah_ is not on board. "Do you have any idea how very _dead_ we're going to be if you don't get your ass up to the Bridge and _fly us out of here?"_ Dani retorts.

#

The Bridge is filled with smoke. Consoles are sparking. Dani shoves Vala roughly down into the pilot's seat.

"Arm the weapons, and raise our shields," Vala says.

Dani stares at the weapons console. "Sure. How?"

"Oh for the--! Just push buttons until something lights up, darling!"

They're going to die.

But she pushes buttons—not quite at random—and the computer display lights up and says "Shields Online" and she presses a series of red buttons and half the console goes up in a spray of sparks and some of the telltales go black but the screen says "Weapons Array Activated."

A button on the console is flashing. "Automatic Tracking and Target Acquisition." That sounds good. She presses it. To her delight, _Prometheus_ starts firing back. She glances toward the window. They're off the planet, but they're surrounded by Death Gliders.

"Go to hyperspace! Go to hyperspace!" she demands. 

"I can't! We're too badly damaged!" Vala shouts back.

The screen at Dani's console starts flashing red. "Um? The shields are failing."

Vala snarls something. The closest English translation is _"one-who-chooses-as-his-host-a-rotting-corpse."_ It sounds much worse in _Goa'uld_. Shorter, too.

Suddenly one of the _al'kesh_ blows up. _Prometheus_ didn't do it.

"What just happened?" Vala demands.

"We've got company."

_"Dani? Dani, are you there?"_ It's Cam's voice, over the radio. Another _al'kesh_ has been blown to hell and the rest of the ships are retreating.

She runs over to the co-pilot's seat, holding her zat—carefully—on Vala, and activates the comm. It's the one part of the ship she actually knows how to work.

"Cam! I'm here!"

"You okay?"

"Peachy."

"We clear to ring aboard?"

She looks at Vala. "Unlock the ship's systems."

Vala hesitates.

"Look. Those _al'kesh_ have retreated to a _ha'tak_. They'll be back. We have to get out of here, which means fixing the engines, which means ringing my friends on board. Now. Do it or I'm going to lose my temper."

Vala sighs theatrically, shoulders heaving, and punches some numbers into the keyboard. The system beeps, and Dani can see—on her own console—the words "System Unlocked" appear on her screen.

"Okay, Cam," she says. "You're good to go. We'll meet you at the ring platform."

"'We?'"

"You'll see."

#

Vala doesn't stop talking the entire way there. About how this was all a mistake, and how she never meant for things to turn out this way, and how whatever happens, she just wants Dani to know she has only the highest respect for her. Dani keeps telling Vala to _shut up,_ but it doesn't work.

When they're halfway there, they hear a booming "thud," and the ship shakes.

"Magnetic docking," Vala says. "I think we're going to be boarded. Don't you love being boarded?"

"Fuck off," Dani says.

They reach the rings just as they activate. Cam, Sammy, and Teal'c step out.

"Oh, my," Vala says. "I wasn't expecting a Jaffa. But _this_ is obviously the real prize. Hel _lo_ , handsome stranger. What's _your_ name?"

Vala heads for Cam, hips swaying.

Dani grabs the collar of her jumpsuit and yanks Vala back. She spins her and slams her up against the bulkhead as hard as she can and holds the zat to her throat.

"You don't touch him!"

She's shaking with anger, and Vala actually looks surprised.

Cam reaches over her shoulder and puts his hand over hers. Automatically her fingers loosen, and he collects the zat.

"Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, United States Air Force," he says. "Not really pleased to meet you." He steps back, covering Vala.

"She stole our ship," Dani says tightly. 

Cam nods. "I got that."

"She _hit_ me," Vala whines, looking wide-eyed and pathetic.

"You hit me first!" Dani says. Um, not really the time for this. "Our hyperdrive's broken." That's more important.

Cam sighs, just a little. "Teal'c, lock up the prisoner. Dani, you and Sam go see if you can fix it. I'm gonna see if I can fly us out of here on impulse engines."

"Be careful with her," Dani warns. "She fights dirty."

Teal'c nods.

#

While she does fetch-and-carry for Sammy, she finds out what's been going on with the others. The _ha'tak_ was unsalvageable—and everyone on board was dead (killed, possibly, by Vala in her Super Soldier suit, Dani theorizes)—and the _tel'tak's_ engines were disabled. Sammy was able to cannibalize the _ha'tak's_ engine crystals to repair the _tel'tak_ , then use it to track _Prometheus_. The _tel'tak_ had been heavily modified: cloak, heavy weapons, tracking systems.

"A good thing, too, or we'd never have been able to track you through hyperspace—or take out those _al'kesh_ when we got here," Sammy says. "It's an amazing ship; Cam loves it. I'm glad we're going to be able to take it back with us."

"We are?" Assuming they don't all die, of course. But they always assume that.

"It's sealed to the hull right now."

"Good."

Sammy gets the shields up, then the hyperdrive up, then they jump.

Still alive.

"Okay," Sammy says. "Now we want to know what happened to you. C'mon."

They go up to the Bridge—oh, General Landry and Colonel Pendergast aren't going to be happy; _Prometheus_ was in good shape when they left, and now it's a mess. She doesn't know that much about spaceships, but she knows when they left Earth, all the lights on the Bridge were either green, white, or yellow. Now half of them don't light up at all, and most of the rest are red.

"She gonna get us home, Sam?" Cam asks cheerfully, as if he has no doubt the answer is going to be "yes."

"As long as we don't push our luck," Sammy says. "It's a real patch-job, and I had to override most of the fail-safes. I think you're going to have to tell General Landry we're going to be a little late." Sammy leans over his shoulder and punches a few buttons, then inspects the result. "I figure it's going to take us about three days to get there from here in our current condition."

"Better late than never. So. What happened to you?" he asks, looking at her. "Wardrobe malfunction?"

Dani looks down and realizes she's still wearing the Super Soldier armor. "Um... I'm going to go change," she says.

When she comes back (in her own clothes again), she gives them a reasonably-thorough recounting of Vala's capture of the ship.

"But you took her out?" Cam says, looking pleased.

Dani rubs her jaw. It still aches where Vala punched her.

"Didn't do a lot of good; she'd already locked up the ship's systems and programmed it to go to that planet. As far as I could tell, she was going to sell it." She sighs disgustedly. "She _said_ she was a _former_ host."

"Well," Sammy says hesitantly, "I did sense _naquaadah_ in her blood." She shrugs. "But I wouldn't want to bet my life on whether she was a current host or a former one."

"If she were still a _Goa'uld_ , though," Dani says, "I'd never have been able to take her out hand-to-hand. Okay I didn't—exactly—but I held my own. Against a _Goa'uld_ , no."

"So ... former host," Cam says. He looks exhausted but cheerful, and Dani tries to calculate exactly when the last time it was he actually _slept_. "That means she oughta be on our side, right?"

"Don't bet on it," Dani says darkly.

"Well," Sammy says, "we can ask her all about it when we get her back to Earth. Meanwhile, there's still plenty to do to make sure we get there. I'm going to put some food together before we start. Come on, Dani."

#

Limping home in a broken ship. Not really a new experience for them. They notify General Landry of their situation when they drop out of hyperspace to rest the engines, and he tells them to divert to P2A-463, only a few hours from where they are. He'll send _Prometheus's_ crew through the Stargate to them there. More hands for repairs, and they can finally get some sleep. They make it in one last jump, and Cam settles them into a nice safe parking orbit.

Suddenly his console beeps.

"Somebody's activated one of the ring platforms," he says, puzzled. "Down on one of the depressurized decks."

"That doesn't make sense," Sammy says. "System malfunction?" She heads for the console.

Dani's already running toward the brig.

#

The door is open, of course, and Vala's gone. The jumpsuit Dani put her in when she stripped her of her Super Soldier armor is lying neatly folded on her bunk. She runs to the nearest intercom.

"Cam, Vala got loose," she says.

"Yeah," he says, sounding disgusted. "And I know right where she went, too."

"Back to her ship," Dani says, guessing. The modified _tel'tak has_ to have been Vala's original ship.

"And it got away."

Dani sighs deeply. "Sorry."

"Yeah."

#

Once _Prometheus's_ crew is aboard, SG-1 Gates home from P2A-463. At least the _actual_ mission they went on in the first place was a success.

Twenty-four hours after they get home, they're out again. First Contact with actually alien aliens; their mission specialty. If something like this hadn't come up, they would have been off the line for a few days at least, but it did, so they go, and spend thirty-six hours having what amounts to severe hallucinations, because the aliens are telepathic. They don't have a symbol-driven language at all. And they don't experience reality in anything like the way humans—or Jaffa—do. 

She thinks the SGC dials in once, and someone tells them not to send rescue, but she isn't sure it happened, or if it did, who spoke.

The technical term for what SG-1 experiences is _synesthesia_. For a day and a half, Dani tastes colors, hears textures, feels sounds, sees odors, and tries to turn them all into _language_ well enough to communicate with their new friends, because if she can't, they'll never get off this planet. Linked to the alien minds, they can't see well enough to find their way back to the Stargate, to dial the DHD, to send their IDCs. 

She finally succeeds.

_We are friends. We are peaceful explorers. We mean you no harm._

Motion is color is sound is light is scent is touch.

The aliens—it's hard to think of them without words, and writing up _this_ Mission Report is going to be a joy—retreat from their minds. She feels a sense of frustration and regret—hers, theirs. They can't really talk to each other, and they want to so very much.

"Good. Good job," Cam whispers hoarsely. 

She can't see his voice any more, or taste it. Only hear it. She blinks. She has a blinding headache, and from the look on Cam's face, he does too. Things have been happening to their brains that are just, well, _wrong._

He staggers to his feet. Everything around them is quiet and flat and normal, and it looks very strange.

Teal'c and Sammy are up, and they both look as though they're having the worst hangovers of their lives. Cam shakes his head as if to clear it. He starts to say something, and stops. "Let's go home."

#

Sally wants to keep them all for seventy-two hours of observation (restricted to Base, check-in with the Infirmary twice a day), and for once Dani doesn't mind. Three days of dull-boring-and-normal while she works on her backlog suits her just fine. And General Landry's in Washington at a hearing, so the place will be even quieter than usual.

It would be nice if they got the vacation, but two days later, Tegalus is dialing the SGC. Jarrod Kane is radioing them, asking to be let through. He says it's urgent.

It's 0200 in the SGC. Colonel Reynolds is in charge while General Landry's gone. Colonel Reynolds, of course, is home in bed. The Night Duty Officer is no fool: he calls Cam first, since Cam is on-Base and it's urgent. Cam calls her—she's in her office working. She's the one with personal experience: a bit over two years ago, SG-1's arrival on Tegalus touched off a holy war in the Rand Protectorate. She'd been marooned there for a month until she was able to contact the SGC and arrange for the rebel forces—led by Jarrod Kane—to retake the bunker containing the Stargate. They haven't had a lot of contact with Tegalus since.

When Jarrod comes through, he tells them why he risked everything to come to the SGC without authorization from his government. Jarrod was a soldier the last time she saw him. He's now—apparently—a civilian, a member of Rand's elected governing council. Senator Jarrod Kane.

Like so many of the relatively-advanced societies they encounter, the Tegalans have colonized their planet, split up into nations, and promptly gone to war. Their technology is roughly early 20th century, though their war-making technology is a little more advanced than that: radio and the internal combustion engine, chemical-powered surface-to-surface missiles, but horses are still in wide use. She gathered from what little she heard about their neighbor-nation that Caledonia is larger but slightly less advanced. When SG-1 (Colonel Polasco's SG-1) inadvertently showed Rand their Stargate wasn't simply a museum piece, Caledonia and the Rand Protectorate had been locked into a Cold War for decades. SG-1's arrival sparked a religious war in Rand, which Caledonia took full advantage of. Both nations suffered heavy losses. The SGC offered to help the Tegalans rebuild but—perhaps understandably—the new government of Rand wasn't wild about further contact with the offworlders who'd been responsible, even accidentally, for plunging them into apocalypse.

Now Jarrod tells them that under Rand's new leader, President Nadal, Rand has been conducting its own explorations through its Stargate. There was tremendous loss of life at first—even when they managed to achieve a wormhole through what amounted to random dialing, two-thirds of the explorers simply never returned. (Yeah, three guesses why.) But over the last year their success rate has improved.

And they've met the Lucian Alliance.

"They offered to be our friends, and to teach us more about the Stargate. They asked very little in return," Jarrod says, shaking his head.

They're sitting around the Conference Table now: Jarrod and the four of them. Colonel Reynolds has been notified, and so has General Landry, but this can't wait.

"Like what?" Dani asks.

"Rocks," Jarrod says, puzzled. "They excavated most of our Western Desert. I suppose the rocks must have had some sort of value to them, but they're worthless to us. In exchange, they gave us ... this."

He brought a large map-tube with him when he came through the Stargate. He opens it now, and spreads out several large sheets of paper. Blueprints.

"Oh, that doesn't look good," Cam says.

"It isn't," Jarrod says quietly. "It's a weapon that orbits our planet. Caledonia will be defenseless against it. These blueprints aren't complete. But they're all I was able to copy."

"When will it be ready?" Sammy asks.

"We tested it two days ago," Jarrod says. "Until then ... I did not realize the sheer ... destruction. I was one of the observers. A beam of light swept down out of the sky and completely destroyed a Caledonian border fort. When my party rode over to view the site afterward, the heat was so great we could not approach closely. The ground had been turned to glass. No one survived. President Nadal has given Minister Chaska a deadline of five days to surrender all of Caledonia to Rand occupation. After that, he will begin using the weapon on every city and town within their borders. They'll be destroyed."

"And you're here why?" Cam asks.

"Colonel Mitchell, no one should possess such power. If you can destroy the device, we can certainly build another one--"

Seeing as how the Lucians have kindly retroengineered their death-ray to Tegalus's level of technology.

"--but we cannot place it in orbit around Tegalus. We have yet to be able to build a missile capable of achieving orbit. It will be of limited use to us."

"That would be nice," Dani mutters.

"You don't understand," Jarrod tells her. "Our missile technology and guidance systems are far more advanced than Caledonia's. During the war, we attacked their major cities and population centers, but their farmlands were left nearly untouched. We weren't so fortunate. Caledonian reprisals struck everywhere, and what they didn't destroy, Soren did. There has been food rationing in Rand ever since you left--"

"We offered you aid. You refused," she protests.

"President Nadal did not wish to become entangled with the same alien society that had nearly destroyed us once," Jarrod says, waving her objection aside. "And meanwhile, Caledonia possesses surpluses which it refuses to provide, while the children of Rand starve."

Dani sighs inwardly. In her experience, when _anybody_ starts mentioning starving children, real or metaphorical, it means reasoned discourse is pretty much over.

"Yeah," Cam says. "Hey, somebody want to take, ah, Senator Kane on down to the Commissary for a slice of pie? It's not all that good, but it's here," he says in an aside to Jarrod. He grins. "We're just going to talk amongst ourselves for a while."

There are SFs in the room of course (after this long, she really doesn't notice living under armed guard any more). One of them steps forward.

"Okay, folks," Cam says, once Jarrod has left the room. "Let's break this down."

"If we can take out the satellite, it might buy Rand and Caledonia time to go back to the negotiating table to work out a peaceful solution," Dani says tentatively. "The whole problem is pretty much our fault in the first place."

Cam doesn't say anything, but she knows he's listened. He turns to Sammy. She's got the blueprints spread out and is frowning at them.

"I wish I had the complete plans. I have no idea of how this weapon is powered. Did Rand jump from chemical-powered rockets to nuclear weapons in less than three years? Did the Lucians sell them a power source? I have no idea. Whatever the power source is, it seems to need to charge a _really_ primitive battery that directly powers the weapon, so it takes a long time to recharge between shots."

"How long?" Cam asks. 

Sammy just shrugs. "Ten minutes? An hour? Twelve hours? Maybe five days, and that's why President Nadal set the deadline when he did. Without complete schematics—and seeing the power source—I can't tell you. But it really doesn't look—from this delivery system—as if it can possibly have any defensive shields."

Cam nods. "Makes sense. Neither side has airplanes, let alone orbital missiles."

It's true. Both sides have fairly sophisticated missile weapons, but neither side has invented the airplane. Just as well, Dani supposes, since they'd probably just use it to drop bombs on each other.

"Which means that one shot from _Prometheus_ should take it out," Sammy finishes.

"Mitchell. SG-1. I understand we have a guest?"

Colonel Reynolds has arrived. Cam briefs him on the situation. A typical day at the SGC: alien national comes knocking on their door seeking aid.

"Generally the SGC doesn't meddle in offworld internal politics," Reynolds says slowly.

Generally they _do._ She opens her mouth. Under the table, Cam taps her on the knee. She settles back.

"Yeah, well, horse was out of that particular barn a while back on this one," Cam says ruefully, shaking his head. "We're kinda just hopin' to do a little damage control here. And maybe get 'em talking to each other."

"What would you need?" Reynolds asks.

" _Prometheus_ is due back soon, isn't she?"

"Back in orbit today. I don't think Pendergast is going to let you have her again, after the way you gave her back to him the last time."

"Oh, no, no. Nothing like that. I was just kind of wondering if he'd like to take us for a little spin and maybe do some target practice."

Reynolds smiles. "I'm pretty sure that can be arranged. I'll put in a call to General Landry to make sure it's all right with him."

The moment he's thoroughly gone, she rounds on Cam.

"I have to go to Tegalus to talk to Nadal! Blowing up the satellite isn't enough, if Caledonia and Rand still refuse to talk to each other!"

"One thing at a time," Cam says.

She opens her mouth to argue. He holds up a finger.

"One," he repeats. "Thing at a time. _First_ we get _Prometheus_. _Then_ we load 'er up with humanitarian aid. _Then_ we all go to Tegalus and blow up the satellite. Then us and Jarrod and a bunch of food can ring down into the Rand capital city and we'll start passing out Meals on Wheels while you explain how it's in everybody's best interests to get along with each other."

"And meanwhile Jarrod is telling them all about how _Prometheus_ can blow them all to hell if they don't fall into line," she says happily.

"Not exactly what I was thinking, but if it works, it works," Cam agrees.

She goes down to the Commissary to keep Jarrod company, and to tell him they're hoping to help him. She asks after Leda—Jarrod's wife, the woman who took her in and hid her when she was trapped on Tegalus. Jarrod shakes his head.

"She... There is much unrest in the city these days. I'd hoped the country would be safer, but ... these are difficult times."

"She's dead," Dani says.

"Rovers broke into the house searching for food. She was killed before the security forces could respond. The men responsible were caught, of course, but--"

"It doesn't bring her back."

"No."

"I'm sorry."

"Danielle, you _have_ to help us! I loathe the Caledonians with every fiber of my being for what they have done to Rand, but ... no one deserves to die that way. And once Caledonia has been destroyed ... the weapon will still be there."

"Yes, Jarrod, it will. And weapons will always be used."

#

When Cam comes down to tell her they've got the okay to borrow _Prometheus_ , it's time for the next step. ( _Her_ next step, anyway.)

"We need to contact President Nadal and let him know we're coming," she says. "He probably already knows Jarrod's here—or at least, that he isn't there. I'd like to start him thinking about the possibility of re-opening negotiations with Caledonia before we show up. And, uh, apparently things are a little tense in Rand. If we just ring down without warning, we might get shot."

"Can't have that," Cam says. "I'm gonna teach you how to make meatloaf. Okay, let's go."

It's probably much better to not think about the connection between "meatloaf" and "weapons platforms" in Cam's mind, much less his threat of (apparently) teaching her to cook. They go up to the Control Room and dial in to Tegalus. (She wonders if General Landry's gotten any of their messages yet.)

She speaks to a Commander Pernaux (Jarrod tells her, away from the microphone, Goran Pernaux is an old friend of his, currently the Supreme Military Commander of Rand) and explains to him that she's Dr. Danielle Jackson of Stargate Command, one of the aliens who visited his world two years ago, and that she understands Rand has recently built an orbital weapons platform to use against Caledonia. She hopes their difficulties with Caledonia can be resolved—instead—without the need to resort to violence. Will it be possible to come to Rand to discuss this?

There's a long pause from the other end. "Is Senator Kane with you, Doctor Jackson?"

She looks toward Jarrod inquiringly. He nods. "Yes. He is."

"I see. I must consult with President Nadal. We will contact you shortly."

Two hours later, the message comes: Nadal has agreed to hold talks with the Caledonians, and wants Jarrod and Dani to come to Rand immediately to help arrange them.

"I've got to go," she tells Cam. "Right now. Look. I'll have Jarrod with me, I'll be perfectly safe. It will be at least two days before _Prometheus_ can get us there. If we wait that long, he'll think we're trying to trick him. This whole thing could fall apart."

"I don't like it," Cam says. "We should go with you."

"No," Jarrod says, shaking his head. "I'm afraid that an ... armed escort would be seen as a ... show of bad faith on your part."

"Cam, they don't like us very much to begin with. This is a big concession from the Tegalans," she says urgently. "Please! Let me go and _do my job._ I promise. Everything will be _fine._ If I don't do this now... we might not get another chance."

And the war on Tegalus is their fault in the first place. He's read the mission reports. She's right, and he knows it, but his expression says he doesn't like it. "You check in every two hours," he says firmly. "No exceptions."

"I will," she promises.

She doesn't.

She doesn't, because the moment she and Jarrod step through the Stargate, they're arrested and jailed. The guards take her vest, radio, sidearm, and GDOs (wrist and ankle both). They even take her candy bars. 

It was a trap. A trap and a lie.

At least she's still got her wristwatch and glasses.

"Is this your President's idea of 'talking?'" she asks crossly, as the cell door clangs shut behind her. She and Jarrod are in adjoining cells. She paces irritably. This is a spectacular mess. Cam is never going to let her out without a keeper again.

Jarrod sighs. "What will your people do when they don't hear from you?"

"Assume I'm in trouble." Always a safe bet. "And go ahead with their plan."

About an hour later, they have a visitor: a plump (and hey, isn't Rand supposed to be experiencing famine conditions?) balding, and really pissed-off-looking man, flanked by two guards. Jarrod gets to his feet, looking truly worried.

"President Nadal," he says. (She thought so.)

"Senator Kane," Nadal says. (Very nice sneer. Not quite up to _Goa'uld_ standards, but still.)

"This is Doctor Danielle Jackson, of Earth," Jarrod says.

"I know who she is," Nadal says.

She gets to her feet and walks to the front of her cell. "I'm here on a diplomatic mission," she points out.

"And I am here to officially inform you, Jarrod Kane, Danielle Jackson, that you are _both_ under arrest for treason," Nadal says. He sounds really pleased about it, too.

"You can't do that," she says slowly. She knows damned well you can only commit treason against your own government, not somebody else's.

Nadal smiles. "Your government has knowingly harbored a felon. As well, it seems, as receiving top secret documents vital to the security of this country. As of now, you are both considered enemies of Rand, and you will be detained until trial can be set."

He turns around and walks out, followed by his guards. The outer door of the cellblock clangs shut behind him.

She goes back and sits down on her bunk again. At least this jail cell is reasonably clean.

"I suppose I can assume any kind of trial will be rigged?" she asks contemptuously.

Jarrod shakes his head sorrowfully. "Honestly? We'll be lucky to get that far. President Nadal has been paranoid about Caledonian spies for some time now. Now that he feels I've betrayed him by seeking your help, he'll undoubtedly assume I'm also part of that network."

She stares at Jarrod in disbelief. _And you didn't think to mention this back on Earth?_ "Oh, that's just peachy," she says. "I don't suppose your country has any laws against torture?"

There's a moment of silence before Jarrod answers. "No."

She sighs.

Well, its only two days before the cavalry gets here. She can stall them that long, right?

Jarrod sits silently on the corner of his bunk, undoubtedly contemplating his unhappy future. She lies on hers, playing chess in her head. She's nervous, but not really worried. She doesn't think the Protectorate will kill her in the next two days, and after that, _Prometheus_ will be here. It will take out the orbiting weapons platform, and then they'll get her back. Somehow.

After a while, she glances at her watch. Missed her first check-in. The SGC is probably dialing up Tegalus right now. She wonders who they're going to get to talk to—if anyone—and what story they'll get. Whatever it is, Cam won't believe it. She wonders what he'll do about it. Might try Gating in, but she doesn't think so. He's smarter than that. He'll wait, and come in _Prometheus_. 

All she has to do is hold on, and she'll be rescued.

(She's pretty sure he isn't going to wait long enough to load the humanitarian aid.)

Four hours after her arrival—two missed check-ins, _Prometheus_ should be on its way to Tegalus by now, and she wonders what kind of torture the Protectorate is going to use—they get another visitor. This one actually enters Jarrod's cell. Jarrod gets to his feet, looking confused and hopeful.

"I applaud your courage, Kane. What I don't understand is why you came back."

She recognizes the voice. This is Commander Pernaux, the man she spoke to before. He and Jarrod are—or at least were—friends, but now all Pernaux wants to know is the names of Jarrod's Caledonian co-conspirators.

Dani tries to explain that there _aren't_ any, Jarrod came to Earth for help, that she feels Rand and Caledonia can still manage to live together in peace if they'll just _talk_ to each other.

"The time for talking is past," Pernaux says. "Except for you. You're going to tell me everything I want to know. I guarantee you, neither of you will know a moment's peace until you do."

"Reassuring," Dani says, after he leaves.

The night passes quietly. Which is to say, they aren't fed, the temperature in the cellblock drops sharply, and after a while guards come in with hoses and soak them both down with icy water, a procedure they repeat every few hours. Dani knows it's only a softening-up procedure, but she's still miserable. She paces to warm herself, and turns her back each time the guards return. This is bad, but it's better than a beating. That's probably next on the agenda, though.

The next day they take Jarrod out of his cell and stop hosing her down. It gets a little warmer, she thinks—anyway, her clothing goes from sodden to merely damp. She lies on her bunk—the coversheet is plastic—and dozes, shivering. They'll probably take her next. She draws as much comfort as she can from knowing she can't give them any information they can use, because she doesn't know anything. But she hates being tortured.

Every hour that passes means rescue is an hour closer.

It's a long time before they bring Jarrod back. Two of the guards are dragging him between them, but there are no marks on him. He's shaking and pale, though. Barely conscious. They throw him into the cell and leave without taking her.

"Jarrod? Can you hear me?"

He doesn't respond. She reaches through the bars, but she can't touch him. After a few hours, he rouses enough to climb up onto his bunk, but he won't talk to her.

They don't take her for questioning at all.

The next night is a repeat of the first. She has to press herself against the wall to avoid taking jets of water in the face, but if she does that, it's harder to catch any of it in her hands to drink, and she's very thirsty by now. She compromises, standing over her bunk. When the guards leave, she sucks up the pooled water from the plastic mattress, then takes off her shirt and t-shirt, wringing them out for more water before struggling back into them for warmth. She shouts at Jarrod to get up, to _move,_ and finally he does.

It's a very long night.

_Prometheus_ will be here in the morning.

#

In the morning, they're both dragged out of their cells, two guards on each of them. For one brief moment of hope, she thinks Nadal's been bitch-slapped into letting them go. _Prometheus_ must be here. The timing is right. In a few hours she'll be warm and dry.

Then they're hustled up to the Command Bunker. Over the radio, she hears Colonel Pendergast begging to be allowed to surrender. _Prometheus_ is severely damaged and there are wounded on board.

Nadal turns to her. "Your planet sent this ship to attack us. I have no desire to take more lives. Tell us what we want to know, and I will accept their surrender."

She stares at him in horror. Two days of no food and almost no sleep and now, instead of them being able to take out the satellite and rescue her, she's hearing _Prometheus_ has been smashed to pieces instead.

"Who else was involved in this attack? What other actions are the Caledonians planning?" Pernaux demands.

"We aren't spies," she says desperately. "I came here because you asked me to—I came to help you talk to the Caledonians and resolve your differences peacefully! Jarrod—Senator Kane—says you're suffering from famine, crop failures. We can help you, if you'll just let us! The Caledonians--"

Pernaux ignores her, turning to Jarrod. "Who helped you gain access to the Stargate?"

"I acted alone," Jarrod says steadily.

"You're lying!" Nadal snaps. "You are part of a spy network helping to supply the Caledonians with classified information!"

"If that's true, it will only get worse if you use that weapon against them!" Dani says urgently. "You still have a chance for peace! Haven't you had enough of war? We'll help _both_ of you rebuild! _Please!_ "

"The weapon is charged," she hears someone say.

Nadal glares furiously at her.

"Your ship fired upon us, Doctor Jackson. And you have done nothing to save their lives. We have every right to defend ourselves."

"This isn't defense!" she shouts. "This is _murder!_ They're trying to surrender, damn you! They're helpless!"

"Fire," Nadal says.

"Wait!" she screams, and Jarrod shouts, "No!" but it's too late. She struggles against her guards, but it's useless. Too late.

_Prometheus_ is gone.

Two hundred fifty people.

Sammy, Cam, Teal'c.

Gone.

#

She sits huddled in the corner of her cell, her face turned toward the wall. Dead. They're all dead.

Time passes. She doesn't know how long. She doesn't care.

She told Cam she'd be fine.

He said he was going to teach her to make meatloaf.

Sammy's never going to see Cassie graduate High School now.

Teal'c...

All dead.

She wants to give up, to die, to _stop_ , and never have to feel anything again. To stop counting her failures. To stop watching her successes turn to sand and trickle through her fingers. _No one is left behind. We promise. But you left me behind. How could you do that, Sammy, Teal'c, Cam…? I want to come with you._

She can't.

They're dead, but she's alive. She has to salvage what she can from this—create the peace she came to broker—or all those deaths won't just be tragic, but pointless. She tells herself that, over and over: if she does nothing, she throws away their deaths. Teal'c's. Sammy's. Cam's.

If she does nothing, she will have led them to their deaths and still failed. She has work to do. She'll mourn later. 

_What do you have, and what do you need?_

(Jack.)

Tears sting her eyes. She scrubs them away before they can fall. The weapon must still be intact. She has to convince the Protectorate not to use it. There are thousands of lives still at stake. Think!

Slowly, slowly, her mind refocuses on the task at hand. What does she have to work with?

Pernaux.

She thinks Pernaux might have been listening to Jarrod before. And in the bunker—well, Pernaux is military, and _Prometheus_ was asking to surrender. You don't kill an enemy that's trying to surrender. Even Teal'c had problems with the idea of doing that back when he was still First Prime to Apophis—which means the concept has to be almost universal. If she or Jarrod can talk to Pernaux again, they can explain that using the weapon on Caledonia won't eliminate their enemy, it will only create an enemy with a greater resolve.

And less to lose.

She has nothing left to lose now. Everything is gone. Except Cassie. _Oh, god, Sammy. We were so close to seeing her safe._

She's always been able to bury the personal beneath the professional. She does it now. She'll mourn later. The mission. That's all that's important.

Her work is all she has left.

She wishes she knew more about Caledonia, but she barely knows anything about Rand. What's the actual basis for their disagreement? Politics? Religion? Philosophy? Economics? It's unlikely to be territory at this point: both nations have lost more than fifty percent of their populations in the last war, and that was barely two years ago. Jarrod said Caledonia was harder hit because Rand targeted its cities, while Caledonia struck Rand indiscriminately. There has to be something in that she can use...

Eventually she raises her head. Everything's stiff, and she aches with cold. Slowly, she gets to her feet. She wobbles a little, dizzy with fasting.

"I don't know what to say," Jarrod says when he sees her move. "I should never have come to you."

"We still have to try to make this work," she says, her voice scratchy with thirst and disuse. "Talk to Pernaux. I think he'll listen. Make him see using the weapon against Caledonia isn't going to end the war. It's only going to create an enemy that will stop at nothing to destroy Rand." 

Jarrod stares at her in disbelief.

"Do you ever give up?" he asks her.

"No." _Not until I'm dead. And, sometimes, not even then._

She forces herself to walk around her cell. The dizziness passes, but the lack of food is starting to take its toll. Her head aches. She hopes Jarrod will remember to ask for Pernaux if he's taken out of here again. Are the guards coming back? Will they come for her this time? If they do, can she get a message to Pernaux on Jarrod's behalf? She isn't sure of it, or if the message will be passed. If Pernaux will come. She wonders if General Landry knows what happened to _Prometheus_. She wonders if he knows she's still alive. Maybe not. He'll ask, of course. And Nadal will have no problem lying. She knows General Hammond wouldn't believe him without proof. She's not sure about General Landry. Have to assume this is It, though. Some mission some day would have to be. A mercy mission—even a spectacularly fucked-up one—isn't that bad to go out on. Jack would think so. Cam would think so.

And then all the lights go out. They've been down in this cellblock for two days, and the lights have never gone out before. 

"Well, that's different," she says mildly.

A few minutes later, soldiers with flashlights come for them to take them back to the Command Bunker. The Command Bunker is dark, too. Nadal says they've been hit by some kind of weapon which could only have been provided by her people. 

Oh, god, she hopes so. That would mean at least some of them are still alive.

All the monitoring equipment in the bunker is disabled, but it still has phone and radio. Nadal is getting reports by phone from a remote site that has some kind of remote sensing capability. He says there's an Earth ship heading for the satellite. It has to be one of the 302s _Prometheus_ carried. When it reaches the satelite it will probably destroy it, because right now the bunker can't send the satellite any control messages.

But.

Even with the satellite destroyed, Rand and Caledonia will still have all the weapons they had before. They'll still be as close to war as they were before.

This is a chance.

"Let me talk to the pilot," she says. "I can call him off. But you have to make it worth my while."

"I'll give you your life," Nadal says.

She smiles. "Not nearly good enough. Look. Isn't there _any_ compromise possible here?"

"There is no way Rand and Caledonia can continue to share the same planet," Nadal says.

"Fine!" she says. "You've got the Stargate! One of you leave!"

"Very well," President Nadal says. "We will permit the Caledonians free access to the Stargate under a flag of truce in order to relocate to any planet they choose. I give you my word. Now call off your ship."

She's pushed over to the radio transmitter and handed a microphone. Headphones are pushed over her ears, and she hears the hiss of an open channel. She glances sideways, and sees President Nadal putting on a second set of earphones. He'll be able to hear the entire conversation.

"This is Danielle Jackson. Come in please. To whoever's flying the 302, if you can hear me, please respond. This is Danielle Jackson, come in, _please!_ "

There's a moment of silence, then the receiver crackles to life.

"Good to hear your voice."

"Cam?"

He's alive.

"Yeah. You okay?"

She glances at Nadal. He can hear every word. "For now. You?"

"Well, all things considered. Listen, Teal'c and me are getting ready to bag us a weapons platform here, so--"

"Uh, yeah, about that. Listen, the Rand want to offer the Caledonians a deal in exchange for ... not."

"Oh yeah?" Cam sounds dubious.

"Dani, this is Sam."

She takes a deep breath. Cam said he had Teal'c with him. All three of them are alive.

"Hey, Sammy," she says.

"I'm here with Minister Chaska of the Caledonian Federation. We'd like to know what Rand is offering."

She glances at Nadal again. "In exchange for leaving the satellite intact, Rand is offering Caledonia the Stargate—specifically, free access to the Gate under a flag of truce so the Caledonians can relocate to another world."

The logistics will be a nightmare.

"Are you _sure_ about this?" Cam asks her. "Because I've got a clean shot at this puppy, and I'm in favor of taking it."

"No! Listen, Rand built the satellite in less than a year. Destroy it, and they'll use the same weapons from the ground—and they and Caledonia both have the same missiles they used before. They'll use them. There won't be anything left of either side. This is their only chance."

There's a long tense silence. Then she hears Sammy's voice again.

"Blue Leader, this is Carter. Minister Chaska is requesting you stand down."

"You folks had better be damned sure about this," she hears Cam mutter.

Suddenly the regular lights come on in the bunker.

"Backup power is online. Satellite control has been reestablished. Sensors detect the Earth ship is veering away from the target," one of the technicians says.

Okay. Good so far. She sets down the microphone.

"Activate the satellite shields," Nadal says.

What?

"But the ship is no longer a threat," Commander Pernaux protests.

"Power the weapon," Nadal orders.

"No!" She grabs for the microphone and is yanked back.

Nadal says to target the Caledonian Capital Building. That's probably where Sammy is right now. Pernaux argues with Nadal, but Nadal isn't listening. She's struggling with her guards, but there are two of them, and she isn't getting very far.

"Dani? What's going on down there? The satellite is powering up its weapon and targeting the planet," Cam says over the radio. In her earphones, his voice is overlaid by another one, unfamiliar, demanding that Nadal explain his actions immediately.

"We had a deal!" Dani cries desperately. "You don't have to do this!"

"You gave your word!" Jarrod shouts.

"They're all Caledonians! They all deserve to die! It is the will of Avidan!"

Oh, _fuck._ Nadal is a crazy religious conservative.

That explains _everything._

"Shut down the satellite!" Pernaux tells the technician.

"Don't listen to him!" Nadal screams. He's rapidly coming unglued, but the moment he mentioned "Avidan" he lost the support of most of the people in this room, and he's smart enough to know it.

_"Now!"_ Pernaux shouts.

Nadal orders Pernaux arrested. The guards hesitate long enough for Pernaux to shoot Nadal. Nadal's guards shoot Pernaux. It's all over quickly, but while Nadal is dead, Pernaux is only dying, and for the few minutes he's alive, he's in command of Rand. 

He orders the satellite shut down, and insists the deal Dani has made will stand.

Oddly enough, Jarrod is next in line after Pernaux. There's irony for you.

#

After that, it's all mop-up. She calls Caledonia back and she and Jarrod both assure Minister Chaska that the deal Dani made will stand. In an hour, once Jarrod has taken personal command of the troops and given orders for his safe conduct through Rand airspace, Cam will fly to Rand to check in personally.

Thirty people made it off _Prometheus_ alive. Thirty. She sets down the microphone.

"I need my gear," she tells Jarrod.

It's easy to locate (a minor miracle), and most of it's even intact. All she cares about right now is the GDO and her radio. Her next stop is the Stargate. She dials home. General Landry is back from Washington. She makes a preliminary report. _Prometheus_ gone. Thirty survivors, names unknown. SG-1 alive. Cam is coming to make a fuller report.

"Do you need backup, Dr. Jackson?" General Landry asks.

"No, sir. The situation is under control here. It will probably take several days to transport the surviving personnel here from Caledonia. Until then, someone will check in every two hours."

"See that they do," General Landry says.

#

She wolfs down a couple of Powerbars (apparently not recognized by the Protectorate forces as food, and so not stolen), and Jarrod finds her a cup of tea. Forty-five minutes before her next check-in time, Cam and Teal'c land a 302 in the plaza outside the Command Bunker. Cam looks a little battered—there's a cut on his forehead—and more than a little grim. His expression lightens a little when he sees her, but not much.

"Last damn time I let you go off somewhere by yourself," he says.

"Nadal was a Avidanite. Nobody knew."

"Soren's nutcases?" Cam asks. "I thought--"

"--the cult collapsed when Soren got himself shot? So did everybody else."

"It is good to see you well, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c says.

"It is good to see you _alive,_ " she answers.

She takes Cam and Teal'c to meet Jarrod. He apologizes over and over for what happened, and she finds out a little more of the story.

They'd always known the plans for the satellite Jarrod brought them were incomplete. What no one (except possibly Nadal) knew was that the Lucians sold the Protectorate of Rand a _Goa'uld_ defensive shield to go with it. When _Prometheus_ arrived in Tegalan space, the satellite fired on them. When _Prometheus_ fired back, its weapons were stopped by the _Goa'uld_ shield. Though the satellite's rate of fire was slow, it was powerful, and _Prometheus_ couldn't punch through its shield.

Fortunately, all the satellite's systems, including the _Goa'uld_ shield, were controlled from the bunker, and Sammy figured out a way to fry their link to the satellite.

It's time for the next check-in. Cam talks to General Landry, who tells him he's diverting _Odyssey_ to Tegalus to pick up the surviving 302s—they're expensive enough to be worth the cost of an interstellar salvage run. _Odyssey_ will retrieve the surviving crew as well, so the four of them can stay where they are. SG-1 is to continue to make regular check-ins, and return home through the Stargate once _Odyssey_ has left Tegalus.

"Yes, sir," Cam says. "I'm going to leave Teal'c here with Dr. Jackson and return to Caledonia to help Minister Chaska with the relocation plans. Colonel Mitchell out."

"Be sure to pick them a nice planet," she says, when the Event Horizon collapses. "Sammy knows some."

"You sure you're okay?" he asks, tipping her chin up with a finger to inspect her face.

She closes her eyes for just a moment. "Cold. Wet. Tired. Okay."

"Okay, then," he says, releasing her. "Check in twice a day."

"Right."

#

The next forty-eight hours is pretty much a blur. Teal'c doesn't really leave her side once. She borrows dry ( _completely_ dry) clothes from one of Jarrod's aides, and wears them while her own clothes dry out, then changes back. She eats a couple of hot meals. She gets a few hours of sleep in a warm dry bed. She makes all the scheduled check-ins, both with Earth, and with either Cam or Sammy back in Caledonia. Most of her time, though, is spent refereeing between Rand and Caledonia, because it isn't just a matter of the Caledonians picking up and walking off.

Caledonia wants the Stargate moved to Caledonia to make it easier for them to evacuate. Not impossible: Rand has already moved it once, and while it weighs sixty-four thousand pounds, moving it is well within their capacity. The Rand Security Council is balking at the idea, fearing a trick. They also want to limit what the Caledonians can take with them when they leave, saying that if they allow them to take everything they want to, they'll simply strip Caledonia (soon to be renamed New Rand) bare of all useable resources. (Dani keeps pointing out that there's a limit to what you can take with you through the Stargate no matter what you want. The Randians aren't really listening.) The Caledonians want to keep the address of their new homeworld to themselves. Rand wants to know it.

"I'm sure all these details can be worked out if the two of you will just work together in good faith," she says. Over and over again.

At least both sides are agreeing to talks to work out all the details. They're going to set up a temporary camp right on the border between Rand and Caledonia, since neither side will agree to hold them in the other's country. They haven't agreed to much more than that by the time _Odyssey_ arrives, loads the 302s and the surviving members of _Prometheus's_ crew, and rings down Sammy and Cam in Rand.

"It's time to go," Cam says. He doesn't look like he's gotten much more sleep than she has over the past two days. Or the two days before that, actually.

She wants to tell him they need to stay, they need to make sure the resettlement talks go peacefully, that Rand honors its bargain and Caledonia goes along with it. She doesn't actually think it will make any difference whether she's here or not.

She tells Jarrod to keep in touch. He promises he will.

And they go home.

#

The debriefing is long and complicated, filled with details nobody wanted to bring up while they were all still on Rand. She learns that Colonel Pendergast didn't make it. To be expected: he was _Odyssey's_ captain; he would have been the last man off—but still depressing news. They've paid a high price for this particular screw-up, and she knows they'll be hearing about it from the IOA.

(She thinks of Heliotrope Squadron. The Snakeskinners.)

"While this is not necessarily a little adventure I would have authorized at the outset, Colonel Mitchell," General Landry says, when the debriefing is done, "once Dr. Jackson placed herself in enemy hands, I agree you had no choice but to go to her aid. Based on the information you possessed at the time, you had no way of knowing the weapons platform would be able to withstand _Prometheus's_ attack, nor that it would possess the offensive capability to destroy her."

"Yes, sir," Cam says mechanically. He doesn't agree. She can tell.

"Dr. Jackson. I appreciate that you were given assurances you were proceeding to Rand under diplomatic immunity, and you had no way of knowing this was not the case. But in the future, I would appreciate it if your understanding of "diplomatic immunity" extended to the concept of "armed escort" as well. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, General." It wouldn't have made a difference. They'd been outnumbered and outgunned the moment they'd stepped through the Stargate.

"However, you did a fine job of getting our people home."

"Yes, General."

"Dismissed."

Cam leaves right after the briefing. He says he has an errand to run. She's actually too tired to go home—though Sammy does, to Cassie. She hangs out with Teal'c in his quarters for a few hours—they watch a movie, though the moment it's over she can't remember what it was—then she goes to her on-Base quarters to sleep.

There will be a memorial service for the crew of _Prometheus_. Probably out at Nellis. Not for a few days, though. _Odyssey_ has to get back to Earth first.

(There must have been a memorial service for Heliotrope Squadron. It disturbs her to realize she doesn't know.)

She doesn't see Cam again until the memorial, three days later.

#

May in Nevada is desert-hot, and the ceremony takes place in an open hangar. Brief. Salute, Taps, the folding of the flag. She and Teal'c are the only civilians there. Colonel Emerson of the _Odyssey_ reads out the eulogy, and the list of the dead. Two hundred twenty names.

All for nothing.

After the ceremony, Sammy and Cam gravitate toward her and Teal'c. She, Sammy, Teal'c, and General Landry flew out this morning. Cam, apparently, was already here. She checks her watch. Their flight back—military transport—leaves in an hour.

Cam smiles faintly, seeing her. She raises her hand in acknowledgement. She's so tired of people dying just so SG-1 can walk away alive.

"C'mon," Cam says wearily. "Let's go find the O Club."

It's dark and quiet. Officers' bar; their Cheyenne Mountain IDs and Cam's word gets her and Teal'c in. The four of them take a booth in the back and order. Scotch for her, bourbon for Cam, vodka tonic for Sammy. Teal'c has orange juice.

"You've been gone," she says to Cam.

Cam looks a little uncomfortable. "I, ah, hand-delivered General Landry's letter to Colonel Pendergast's wife and kids. They needed to know he died saving his crew ... that his death mattered."

She wonders just what Cam told Lionel Pendergast's wife. He can't have told her the truth—that her husband commanded a starship and died thousands of light-years from home.

"Thirty people survived," she says. "That's something."

"It is," Cam agrees. "He was a good man." He sighs. "And at least we salvaged something out of the whole deal."

She shakes her head. "No. We didn't," she says wearily.

Cam looks at her. _I'm sorry,_ she wants to say. He shouldn't have to know what she's about to tell him. But it will be in her Mission Report, and he'll see that.

"The talks broke down about a day after we left. Jarrod ... called us to request military aid. The Caledonians decided they didn't want to leave after all. They'd launched an all-out military attack. He didn't want to use the satellite, but ... he said if we couldn't provide him with an acceptable alternative, he wouldn't have any choice."

"Dammit," Cam says wearily.

"I went to General Landry. He wouldn't consider help of any kind. I don't know what we could have done, really. When I dialed back to talk to Jarrod ... the Stargate couldn't get a lock."

"So it was all for nothing," Cam says.

Sammy looks stunned. She didn't know about this either, because she's been home. On leave, with Cassie. Only Dani's been at her desk, watching Rand and Caledonia throw away everything Earth paid such a high price for.

"Pretty much," she says. She puts her hand over his. "We had to try."

He closes his fingers over hers. "Sure."

#

They fly back into Peterson. Cam's quiet the whole way back. They all are, but, well, Teal'c's always quiet and sometimes she doesn't have a lot to say and Sammy doesn't necessarily chatter. But Cam's _brooding._

They land, and head for their cars. Sammy hangs back and gives her a look, so Dani hangs back too.

"Don't let him be alone tonight," Sammy says, too low for anyone but Dani to hear.

Dani blinks, then nods. Ought to be Sammy, but Sammy's spent too much time (presumed) dead-or-missing lately. She needs to be with Cassie.

She drives home, changes—can't remember when the last time was she spent the night under her own roof: a week? Longer?—throws some extra items into her go-bag (including a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of bourbon) and drives to Cam's. It's mid-afternoon by now. Early May, but she's not really sure of the date or the day of the week. Not without checking her watch, anyway.

She has to bang on his door for quite a while before he answers it. He's still in his blues, minus coat, tie, and cap. He stares at her as if he doesn't recognize her.

"My name's Dani?" she says. "We work together?"

"Yeah, I..." he stops. "I don't think I'm gonna be very good company right now."

"That's nice," she says. "Because I'm lousy company all the time. Now let me in."

He backs away from the door, and she comes inside.

"You moving in?" he asks, because she's got her backpack (workfiles, laptop) over one shoulder and her go-bag in her hand.

"This place is too small. You should move." She closes his door and locks it, slipping on the security chain. Force of habit. She sets her backpack down by the door and takes her go-bag over to the couch. She unzips it and takes out the bottles, placing them carefully on the coffee table. Then she takes her go-bag and drops it by the closet, shrugs out of her jacket and drops it on top of her bag, and goes into the kitchen for glasses.

When she comes back, Cam's hanging up her coat.

"You should change, you know," she says. "Dress uniforms are fussy."

That gets her a smile, though not one of his best ones. "Bossy little thing, aren't you?"

"You have no idea." _"Bossy little thing?"_ God. She _really_ needs to make those ethnographic studies a priority.

"And after that?"

"We get drunk and make obscene phone calls to the good pizza delivery place."

Cam shakes his head and walks off.

She carefully fills both glasses.

He comes back—jeans, t-shirt—and sits down. Sighs wearily. "Three little girls," he says.

Pendergast's family, he must mean. "Drink," she says.

"It won't change anything."

"No. But you won't have to think about it for a while," she says.

They drink in silence, sitting side by side. Outside the window she can hear the yelping and laughter of children playing in the parking lot. This complex is mostly singles and young couples with no dependents, but there are a few transient families here. After a while, Cam picks up the remote and turns on the television. The light slanting through the window makes the picture hard to see, but that isn't the point. The sound of the television blurs the sounds of children playing, children who still (presumably) have two living parents.

He's resting his hand on her knee, his thumb rubbing a circle against her kneecap as if she's a human worry-stone. And she doesn't mind, because there's something bothering him. Bothering him a lot. And by now she'd been pretty sure she'd seen just about every mood and emotion Cam Mitchell had to offer up. And she hasn't seen this one.

"We had the shot," he says finally.

He turns his head to look at her. He's finished most of his drink by now, and she'd poured him a large one. Whatever he's talking about, it isn't something he told Landry in the debrief. _"We arrived in Tegalan space and initiated contact with Rand to determine the whereabouts of Dr. Jackson. While we were speaking to President Nadal, the weapons platform raised its shields and began firing on us..."_

"I'm sorry?" she says. A neutral interrogative interjection understood by native English speakers to mean _"what the fuck?"_

"We had the shot," he repeats. "Dropped out, shields up, had the satellite right in our sights. No shields. Could have taken it out then. I told Pendergast to try to raise Rand instead. Find out where you were."

Giving Rand time to arm the satellite and destroy _Prometheus_.

"We'd intended to broker negotiations between Rand and Caledonia," she offers. Cam turns his head away. "You didn't know how powerful their weapons platform was."

"I should have."

"How? Sammy's the science. Jarrod told us the blueprints were incomplete. You took your best guess."

"It was my job to know."

He's up off the couch now, across the room. Standing against the front door, hands braced against it, head bowed, back to her.

"Okay, say you'd known. You would have taken the shot."

His shoulders sag, just a little. He would have, she thinks. At one time or another, Jack had taken actions that should have resulted in the deaths of each of them: her, Sammy, Teal'c. She'd even given the order to kill him once.

"And Nadal would have killed me, and the crew of _Prometheus_ would all be alive, and the weapons platform would be gone, and Rand and Caledonia would probably still have gone to war right on schedule. And our job really sucks sometimes."

"It really does," Cam says without turning around.

"And the worst part—for me—was sitting in that cell thinking all of you were dead because I hadn't given Nadal a list of names I didn't know. I'm, uh, not really good at this, you know."

Cam laughs a little. "You're doing fine."

"I'm, uh, pretty much done. Nobody knew Nadal was a religious fanatic. Jarrod didn't bother to mention he was a paranoid conspiracy freak. We didn't know the satellite had shields. We had bad intel, and we got fucked."

"You've been hanging out with military types way too much, baby." But he sounds wearily amused now. Resigned. A little more relaxed. He pushes away from the door and walks into the kitchen. Probably a good sign, she thinks. Cam in the kitchen. She freshens her drink and follows him in.

"Not much here," he says, gazing into the refrigerator.

"Now you know why I don't cook," she says. "Another drink?"

"Think I'll have a beer." He regards the glass in her hand quizzically.

"My plans for the evening include getting drunk and sleeping on your couch," she says.

That gets her a real smile.

Cam's idea of "no food in the house" is nothing like a real person's, because there's ground beef in the freezer, and he takes a couple blocks of it out to defrost while he decides what to make out of it. There are also potatoes, and after inspecting them, he decides the best thing to do with them is to peel and slice them. Dani is drafted as kitchen help.

She doesn't mind this part of the work. Very little can go wrong when you're just preparing raw vegetables. She scrubs potatoes and pares away the spoiled bits and peels them carefully.

"Told you I'd teach you how to cook."

"This is not cooking. This is preparation."

When she's peeled a sufficient quantity, Cam shows her how he wants them sliced. She copies his measurements exactly. Then she chops and slices an onion, and Cam layers onion, bacon, and potato slices into a casserole dish.

"Best way to use bad potatoes ever invented," he says, tossing the dish into the oven.

"Those potatoes weren't bad."

"They weren't good, either." He regards the ground meat. "Now what shall we do with this?"

"Meatloaf?" she suggests. He'd been going to teach her to make meatloaf, and she thinks she may have become a little obsessed with the concept. 

Apparently there are more things in meatloaf than meat. But a couple of hours later there's meatloaf, and potato casserole, and biscuits, and what Cam calls 'emergency' green beans (they're frozen), and he says the apples are also a lost cause but will probably do for Apple Crumble if she isn't too picky, and she asks him what in the entire ten months of their acquaintance has given him the idea she's picky about anything much besides coffee, Scotch, chocolate, and beer, and she's been known to make major exceptions for all of those. And he says "apple crumble, then," and makes a small one (she washes and cores, he peels) and after they eat he puts it in the oven, saying it will be ready in half an hour, and they go off to the living room, where he sprawls bonelessly out on the couch. And she settles down next to him, and he puts an arm around her and pulls her against him, the same way she's seen him pull Sammy against him a hundred times.

And it feels good, because that jail cell was cold, and thinking she was going to be tortured was frightening, and believing the others were all dead is an experience she'd rather not repeat. Though some day, of course, it will be true. It's selfish of her to want to die first—and stay that way—but she does.

He surfs around the channels, not stopping for very long anywhere. It's faintly annoying—not that she doesn't do exactly the same thing, but she'd stop in different places—but she isn't paying much attention to the television. He's warm where she's pressed against him, and she can hear his heart beat.

And it's selfish and self-destructive and doomed to be enjoying this—the warmth, the contact, the closeness, the touch of another human being—but it has been a damned rough week. There's no one here to see. She won't do it again after this. She'll go back to the bars. But right now—today, tonight—Cam needs her here. She tells herself that. She's here on Sammy's orders, after all.

Sammy called earlier, while they were making meatloaf. Since Sammy rang her cell, and she'd been up to her wrists in raw meat—and chopped onion, and eggs, and spices, and crushed Saltines, and Cam was giving her a long lecture on all the things that they _could_ put into the meatloaf if they had them, but since they didn't have them, they weren't putting them in, she'd had to let it go to VM and call back after she washed her hands.

_"Where are you?" Sammy asks. She sounds resigned, and Dani's puzzled._

_"Cam's kitchen. We're making meatloaf. You wouldn't believe how messy it is," she says cheerfully._

_"Oh." Sammy's voice tells Dani all she needs to know. She walks out of the kitchen. Out of the living room. Into Cam's bedroom, where Cam won't be able to hear her end of the conversation._

_"You didn't think I'd come," she says accusingly. "I told you I would, and you thought I wouldn't."_

_"I thought you might have left."_

_"And I think, Sammy, you might have told me you had the shot and he didn't take it," she answers waspishly._

_"He told you?"_

_"In half a cup of bourbon veritas."_

_"What did you say?"_

_"I said that if he'd known the satellite could take out Prometheus, he would have told Pendergast to fire, even knowing Nadal would kill me."_

_She hears Sammy laugh shakily. "Nice bedside manner."_

_"Then I told him my plans for the evening involved getting drunk and sleeping on his couch. So he decided to cook."_

_"Good sign."_

_"Yeah. I'm going to get back to that meatloaf now."_

_"Dani?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Sorry."_

_"Sure."_

She'd closed her phone and put it back in her pocket and gone back to the kitchen, and Cam hadn't asked her what the conversation was about. Now she's sitting here, wrapped up in the human pillow, and thinking she never again wants to see him look the way he looked when he opened his door.

Or the way he looked at the memorial service.

Or the way he looked when he climbed out of the 302 outside the bunker in Rand.

But she will.

Because this, all of this—Tegalus, and the telepathic-aliens-with-no-name, and the convergence of alternate universe doubles, and getting hijacked by crazy space pirates—is her normal life. It has been since she was twenty five years old and went through the Stargate for the very first time. And it's Cam's normal life now, too. Loss and lies and apocalypse and betrayal. She's seen it change Sammy. She's even seen it change Teal'c, and he was nearly a century old when he renounced his false gods and joined SG-1. It will change Cam, too. In a few more months—a few years—he won't be the same man anymore. He'll have seen and done too much. Things no one should ever have to see or do. Even if he survives, he won't really be Cam Mitchell any more.

She leans her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It really doesn't seem fair. Or right. He deserves better than this. A home, a family, children. A real life.

After a while she realizes they've been watching the same infomercial for five solid minutes, and she's pretty sure Cam isn't _that_ interested in a special Swiss fat-burning enzyme. She reaches over, takes the remote from his hand, switches it to the Weather Channel and mutes it.

He's asleep.

And a few minutes later she realizes there's _food in the oven_ and somebody better do something about it, so she slides out from under his arm and goes into the kitchen. The timer ticking beside the stove is about to ding; she stifles it in her hand. She suspects the sound could rouse Cam even out of a sound sleep. She takes a dishtowel and eases the pan out of the oven, setting it on the stove to cool. Crisis averted. She goes back into the living room.

He's rather lovely to look at in sleep. Head thrown back, eyes closed. So tired, though.

Nobody should have their jobs. But somebody has to do them.

She wishes she could protect him. She can't even protect herself.

If he sleeps like that for very long, he's going to wake up horribly stiff.

It's a bit of work to collect his arms and legs and get an arm under his shoulders and turn him so he's lying flat on the couch, but she manages. She's strong. He wakes up, but not all the way, and she says "hush," and "it's me," and "go back to sleep, Cam," and he does. She settles a pillow under his head (she got one from his bed before she started) and covers him with Grand'ma's Afghan. After a few minutes, he's settled to sleep again.

She goes around the apartment, turning off lights, shutting curtains, circling back to him every minute or so to check on him. Goes into the kitchen to make coffee. Back to the bedroom to steal another pillow from his bed. Shoves the coffee table out of the way to make room. Goes and gets her backpack. Coffee's ready, and she fixes herself a cup. She steals a corner of the crumble. It's still almost too hot to eat, but it's good. Takes her coffee back out into the living room, makes herself a backrest against the couch with the pillow, and settles down to work, with the Weather Channel for company.

#

"Thought _you_ were supposed to be sleeping on the couch."

He's awake. She checks her watch. Two am. His voice is lazy with sleep.

"I took first watch." She saves the file, closes the computer, and leans forward to set it on the coffee table.

"Everything's quiet." He sits up.

"It is. I even saved the apple crumble from a fiery death." She sits back again.

"Good. Good."

His hand smoothes down her hair, strokes her neck. She drops her chin to her chest. She isn't sure herself whether she's inviting him to touch or not. But his hand lifts away and he stands up. He heads off to the bathroom. She goes into the kitchen for more coffee.

She stands at the kitchen window looking out across the complex. Even in the Wolf Hour there are lights on in some of the other units. People on swing or graveyard shifts, getting up, coming home. When Cam comes back into the kitchen, he's in sweatpants and a different t-shirt.

"You keep drinking that stuff, you're never gonna get any sleep."

"I had my first cup of coffee when I was eight years old, Cam. I've never looked back."

"Hm. You didn't have much dessert."

"Waiting for you."

He gets out bowls and dishes the contents of the pan into it. "Sorry there isn't anything to put on it, but--"

"Cam, tomorrow, well, later today, you will go shopping. And once again your refrigerator will be filled with proto-food. This is great."

They eat, standing up in the kitchen, in a companionable silence. When she's done, he takes her bowl.

"Off to bed," he says.

"Give me ten minutes in the bathroom first, then I'm taking over the couch." She goes to get her bag.

Unlike previous occasions on which she's unexpectedly spent the night at Cam's, this time she actually intended to. She's brought something to sleep in. She goes into the bathroom and washes her face (her own soap; it's hypoallergenic) and brushes her teeth and changes into sweatpants and a sweatshirt. She folds her clothes and tucks them into her bag, puts her glasses into a hard-sided case and adds them as well—she knows Cam's apartment well enough not to trip over anything here. Puts her soap back into its case and her toothbrush into its: the air is arid here a mile above sea-level, and everything dries quickly.

She pads, barefoot, back out into the living room to find Cam carefully smoothing a sheet into place on the couch.

"Oh for god's sake, Cam," she says in faint exasperation. "I've slept on your _floor."_

He straightens up and turns toward her, but she can't quite see his expression. Probably something along the lines of _that's different._

"You know, I could take the couch, and--"

"Cameron. Go. To. Bed," she says. " _Don't_ make me call Sammy."

"Oh, baby, you did that this time of night, she'd kill both of us," Cam says. From the sound of his voice, he's probably grinning at her. She can picture the expression.

"Slowly and painfully," she agrees. "Go."

So he goes, and she lies down on the couch, and pulls the top half of the sheet over her, and Grand'ma's Afghan over that, and snuggles down into the pillow, and hopes this is what Sammy had in mind when she asked her to spend the night with Cam, because it's the best she can do.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The episodes being re-written this chapter are "Ripple Effect" and "Ethon", so there's torture, the loss of most of the crew of _Prometheus_ , and then an apocalyptic war on Tegalus that kills everybody. This may be the chapter with the highest body count, but no promises.


	5. MAY 2006—JULY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bryce Ferguson! Jaffa grief-counselling. Prom Night. Indiana Jones will never get tenure. The return of Vala Mal Doran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for warnings.

In the morning he fries up the last of the potato casserole (odd, but nice) and scrambles some eggs and apologizes for the fact he's out of breakfast meat (since they used up the last of the bacon last night) and there's toast and coffee. And he says he promises not to half-starve her the next time she comes to visit and she tells him he's an idiot, and says she _has_ to leave, because she has to get to the Post Office to pick up her mail and she doesn't actually remember the last time she was home. Which means the few perishable items in her kitchen probably need to be thrown out.

"Might drop by later," Cam says, as if testing a theory.

"Don't expect food," Dani says darkly.

It's only later—halfway to the Post Office—it occurs to her that, well, yes, Cam has "dropped by" before. Quite a lot, in fact. But this is really the first time he's asked first.

And she said "yes."

#

There's the usual stack of envelopes and magazines in her box—she doesn't have any mail come to the house, since she's never there—and she stuffs it all in her backpack without looking at it. Next stop is the store. Milk, orange juice, beer—what else is likely to have gone bad in her absence? She doesn't know. Bread? Always safe. She buys ice cream and two bags of cookies. Shopping done.

She walks into the house. It has the faintly clinical scent that means the service was here within the last twenty-four hours, and every object in sight sparkles and is aligned with military precision. There's a note on her refrigerator saying it's been cleaned, and some items have been removed (and given a decent burial, the note implies but does not say). They're listed. Eggs? Why did she have eggs anyway; she never cooks them. Cheese. She thought that didn't go bad, but she guesses she was wrong. And good thing she bought milk, orange juice, and bread, because they're all on the casualty list.

She puts away groceries, discovers she already had cookies, but the bag was open and they're stale. She throws them out.

Her answering machine is full. All junk phone calls. She deletes them.

She opens her windows—fresh air—and sneezes violently. Oh, god, the roses are starting up. Already? Well, it's May. What the hell is she going to get Sammy for her birthday? She goes to the bathroom for emergency antihistamines. Back to the kitchen for coffee. Remembers her mail. 

She sorts through it, setting the journals aside to go through later. Frustrating to read them, when she can't publish, but they're a good place to troll for potential SGC recruits.

There's a thick envelope from Colonel Fleming, and her heart sinks. More damned papers to sign, and half the time that means finding a notary, and getting witnesses, and she wishes the man knew just how difficult that is to arrange when you work in a _top secret military program_ and most of the people you work with are supposed to be (officially) doing something else, somewhere else.

She tears it open.

Not more papers to sign.

Everything's over.

She thought it would take longer.

But she's holding a sheaf of checks and documents in her hands that say the house is hers, the estate is hers, everything is over and done with, forever and ever, world without end, amen and hallelujah. Sara has been paid, Cassie's trust has been paid, the Air Force Aid Society has been paid, all the beneficiaries listed in the will have been paid or otherwise dealt with. She took care of everyone listed in the Letter of Intent out of her own pocket a long time ago. She has all that back and more.

She thought it would take longer.

She takes coffee and the papers and her backpack up to her study, endorses the checks to her accounts and seals them into their envelopes. Seize the day, because there may not be another one. She writes a large check of her own to Cassie's trust, because ditto. She writes a letter to her lawyer and another one to her accountant and prints them out. Seize the day. She goes back downstairs.

She'd like to escape from her life. But she can't. She can't see a single way out she's willing to take. So she sits on her couch and reads through journals.

Cam doesn't drop by.

He isn't at the Mountain the next morning either. Not at breakfast, not in his office, and—once she finds out Sammy doesn't know where he is either—not answering his cell, because she calls it. So she goes to see General Landry, and is informed that "Colonel Mitchell is taking some personal time."

What the fuck?

"Are you sure, sir? Because maybe he--"

"I spoke to Colonel Mitchell personally, Doctor Jackson. There's nothing to worry about. He'll be back in a few days."

"Yes, sir. Where is he?"

"I'm sure if he wanted you to know, Doctor Jackson, he would have told you. Now if you'll excuse me?"

#

"General Landry says Cam's taking personal time," she says. Back in Sammy's office. _Not_ happy.

Sammy frowns. "Is he sure? Because--"

"Sammy, I've just had this whole conversation downstairs not five minutes ago. Landry's sure. He spoke to Cam personally—at least in his opinion. He says he'll be back in a few days. And he won't tell me where he is."

Sammy's eyes flash dangerously. "We'll see about that. Close the door."

She does, and comes around to Sammy's side of the desk. "He's probably been kidnapped," she says in disgust.

"It isn't really like Cam to go off without a word to anybody," Sammy says. "You were with him yesterday. How did he seem to you?"

"He was fine. We had breakfast, he was going to go grocery shopping ... he said he might come over later, but he never did."

Sammy glances at her. "No call?"

Dani shakes her head.

"And you didn't call him," Sammy says, as if stating the obvious. She's tapping keys on her keyboard. "No travel orders for him. The only Teams through the Gate went on missions that were in the schedule weeks ago. Okay. Here we are. The phone log. Cam called General Landry's office yesterday at 1500 hours using his cell phone. The software we use to log calls automatically records point-of-origin; if it's a cellphone, it pings the GPS chip to get a location."

"Is that legal?" Dani asks dubiously.

"Not ... exactly," Sammy hedges. "But since it does, we know Cam called the General from the Air Force Academy Hospital yesterday at three o'clock, apparently to request personal time."

"Fine. That's where I'll start looking. Cover for me?"

"You got it. And if General Landry asks where you are?"

Dani smiles viciously. "Tell him I'm taking some personal time."

She changes back into her civvies and drives over to the Academy Hospital. Not a lot of good memories here. This is where the _ashrak_ killed all those people while it was hunting for Jolinar in Sammy. This is where they locked Dani up when Ma'chello's _Goa'uld_ -killing devices drove her crazy. This is—it suddenly occurs to her—where they're slowly slicing Jack's body into pieces, trying to understand what the Ancient device did to him.

But her concern today is with the living, not the dead.

Sammy couldn't tell her _where_ in the hospital the call came from, only that it was made from here. She wanders around for over two hours, asking if anyone's seen Colonel Mitchell, until one of the nurses finally directs her to the right floor and wing. She gets there just in time to see Cam _beating the living hell_ out of a coffee machine. She runs down the hall.

"Cam!" she says. He jumps, startled, as if he'd had no idea she was there. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to see..." she stops.

"M'fine," he says.

He isn't. He looks worse than he did when he got back from the memorial service two days ago.

"You never believe that when I say it," she says. Normally that would get her a smile. Not today.

"Go home," he says. He glances up the corridor, and she follows his look, but there's nobody there. Only doctors and nurses.

"Tell me what's wrong," she says.

He shakes his head, closing his eyes wearily.

"Cam," she says, her voice very soft. "You can't do this to us." _You were at Jack's wake, for god's sake._ "Please."

"Let's go outside," he finally says.

They sit on a bench outside the hospital. He's leaning so far over, elbows on knees, it's hard to make out the words. But she pieces together the story he tells her.

Once upon a time there was a man named Bryce Ferguson; he and Cam had been close friends since the Academy. They were both up for a slot in the 302 program. And Cam got it and Fergie didn't because of an accident. Fergie saved Cam's life, and received, as his reward, a piece of shrapnel in his skull that meant he would never fly again. So Cam went into the 302 program, and Fergie retired from the Air Force. Now that piece of shrapnel is going to kill Bryce Ferguson—very soon—because it's causing an inoperable aneurysm. Cam found out about it when they got back from Tegalus (one more disaster in a very bad week). He pulled a lot of strings to get Ferguson brought to Colorado Springs, hoping the medical technology they had at the Academy Hospital—some of it from offworld—could save his friend.

But it can't.

And the one thing Ferguson wants is the one thing Cam can't give him: the truth about what Cam's been doing with his life for the last four years.

"And I don't--" _Know what to do?_ Maybe a sarcophagus could save Cam's friend, but they don't have one. Blending with a _Tok'ra_? It's not for everyone, and the _Tok'ra_ haven't been that easy to get in touch with lately. (At least not when it's Earth that wants something.)

It just isn't--" _Isn't fair?_ Nothing about life is fair. If Major Ferguson had gotten Cam's slot in the 302 program, he'd probably be dead now. Cam's alive because in addition to everything else he is, he's lucky: an intangible that's worth as much as intelligence, and often more, beyond the Gate. _"It is better to be lucky than smart."_ It's one of Amelia's favorite sayings. Cam feels guilty because his friend is going to die because of what he did to save him. It's taken four years between the action and the consequence, but that doesn't make any difference, really. Cam is alive. His friend won't be.

"He just wants to know the truth," Cam says wearily.

"How long does he have to live?" Dani asks.

Cam winces. "Dr. Kelly couldn't say. Not ... long."

"Family?"

"Parents in Iowa. That's about it."

"Are his affairs in order?"

"Well, I ... just why the hell are you asking all these questions?" Cam asks, sitting up and staring at her. "I expect they are—the man has known he's _dying_ for the last six months."

"Okay. Thanks. Look. Don't go anywhere. I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

"What?"

"Just ... wait for me, Cam!"

She runs.

#

It takes every bit of credit she's built up in a decade at Stargate Command, and all of Sammy's too; Sammy was her first stop. She walks into General Landry's office and begs, pleads, argues, demands, even threatens—and doesn't stop until he says "yes."

"Does Colonel Mitchell know you're doing this, Doctor Jackson?" General Landry asks at the end.

"No, sir."

"And what do you suppose his reaction will be when he finds out?"

_He may kill me, sir._ She could have said that to General Hammond. Not to General Landry. So she says nothing.

"Fine. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir."

She stops by Sammy's lab to tell her she's won, stops at the Legal Department to pick up the forms she'll need, then drives back to the Hospital. Goes to Major Ferguson's room; she knows to ask for directions to it now.

"You can't leave," Cam is saying.

"Cam, I'm checking out. Going home. When I die, I'm going to die in my own bed." Bryce Ferguson is blond, square-jawed, pugnacious. He's tossing items into a suitcase laid out on the bed near the window. Cam keeps tossing them right back out again.

Too good a cue to resist. "I thought you wanted to know what Cam's been doing lately," she says, walking in.

"Dani," Cam says.

"Friend of yours?" Ferguson asks.

"We ... work together."

"On this super top-secret project you won't talk about?"

She takes off her backpack and digs in it, finds what she needs. "These are your Non-Disclosure Agreements, Major Ferguson. Please sign and initial all six copies. And then Cam will be happy to tell you everything."

"I will?" Cam asks, sounding confused.

Ferguson takes the forms. "Did I mention I'm dying?"

"I'd heard," she says, refusing to be impressed. "Sign the forms. Then we're going for a ride. I talked to the General," she says in an aside to Cam. He's looking a little stunned—but not so stunned he doesn't walk her out into the hall while Ferguson is signing forms. It takes a while. She knows from experience.

"What did you do?" he asks.

"Um, nothing really. General Landry was really happy to help. Bottom line: your friend gets a tour of the SGC. And a trip through the Stargate. We take half the IOA, random scientists, and a bunch of Air Force Cadets through it all the time. The last time Earth was about to be destroyed and we implemented the Genesis Protocols, we briefed twenty-five hundred people on the existence of the Stargate and shipped them to the Alpha Site in under three hours. Sure, it's a secret. But as I told General Landry, it's not as if we aren't trusting a lot of people with it _now._ And if he was being considered for the 302 program, he's probably pretty trustworthy, you know?"

"Yeah," Cam says. To her surprise, he suddenly hugs her very hard. "Yeah."

"Great," Ferguson says, coming out into the doorway. "Oh, my. Am I interrupting a tender moment? Hey, dead man walking here. When do we leave for Mars?"

She takes the papers from his hand and pages through them quickly. All signed and correct. "Not Mars, Major. Think bigger."

"Hey. Not a "Major" anything anymore. My friends call me Fergie."

"And mine call me Dani. Pleased to meet you."

She follows Cam and Fergie back over to the Base in her Jeep. Sammy is waiting for them at the bottom of the first elevator. Fergie's already looking a little shell-shocked (but delighted, on the whole). Dani guesses Cam was giving him an earful on the drive over.

"Welcome to Stargate Command, Major Ferguson," she says, holding out her hand. "I'm Colonel Carter."

"Please, ma'am, it's just plain "Fergie," now," he says.

"Okay. We've got another elevator ride to take. Then... what would you like to see first?"

Fergie laughs. "Everything!"

#

They don't show him quite everything, but they show him a lot, and even General Landry is gracious, just as if he hadn't been subjected to blackmail to secure Ferguson's presence here. She knows she'll pay for it, though. Probably for years to come.

Fergie's tiring quickly, though he's trying to hide it. New things around every corner, and Cam finally free to tell him everything. He's fascinated by Teal'c _("Oh, man, an actual alien!")_ and Teal'c takes his bogglement with good grace.

"Cam, I think we better cut to the chase," she whispers after about an hour.

Cam nods; he hasn't missed the signs any more than she has. "And now, the _piece de resistance_ ," he says.

"Oh, this piece won't resist!" Fergie says. "What now?"

"We're gonna show you how I commute to work these days," Cam says.

They go down to the Computer Room and Fergie gets his first sight of the Stargate.

"Holy shit!" he says. "Sorry, ma'am. Ma'ams."

Cam just laughs. "You should hear Dani when she gets goin', Fergie. Put you to shame. She's something, ain't she?" 

He's talking about the Stargate now, not her. Why do men call everything "she?" Considering how balky and unreliable the Gate has been on a number of memorable occasions in the past, "he" would be much more reasonable. Or so Sammy always says.

Sammy gives the Hard Science version of the Stargate 101 lecture: alien device, Giza 1928, subspace wormhole, instantaneous transfer between Stargates, yadda yadda. Dani's heard it a thousand times before (and given the Historical Context one at least as many). Fergie is spellbound.

"So ... you want to take a little trip?" Cam asks.

"I can go through it?" _(You'd think,_ Dani thinks sadly, _we were offering him the chance to live.)_

"Yup," Cam says. "To a little place we call the Alpha Site."

"P4X-650 is about one hundred and seventy-five thousand light years from Earth," Sammy says helpfully. Cam said Fergie had wanted the Space Program. At least he'll get to walk on the surface of an alien planet before he dies.

"That'd be ... great," Fergie says.

"Okey-dokey then. You just kick back over here in the Conference Room while we all get suited up. We'll be right back."

#

"Your friend seems unwell," Teal'c says, when they're down in the gear-up room.

"He's just a little tired," Cam says.

And dying.

"Would it not then be more prudent to put off the journey to the Alpha Site until another day?" Teal'c asks.

She glances at Sammy. Sammy does the eye-flick and head-twitch that translates as: _"of course I explained to Teal'c that Major Ferguson is dying."_

"That might not be the best thing," Dani says carefully.

"I see," Teal'c says.

When they come back to the Conference Room, Fergie is sitting slumped over at the table. He straightens up quickly when he hears them come in and pretends he wasn't, and Cam lets him.

He didn't just sign Non Disclosure Forms. He signed Liability Wavers as well. This is killing him. Cam knows it. They all know it. And they're going to let it happen. It's what he wants, and how often do they get the chance to use the Stargate to grant wishes?

They all go down to the Gate Room floor.

General Landry is watching from the Control Room. "SG-1, Major Ferguson, you have a "go" for the Alpha Site. Dial her up, Chief."

(She wonders why he always calls Walter "Chief".)

"Yes, sir. Initiating dialing sequence."

The Stargate begins to spin.

"Take my arm," she says to Ferguson. "We'll walk through together."

He smiles at her. "Hey. When a pretty girl makes me an offer like that, who am I to refuse? Don't want to step on Cam's toes, though."

"Actually," she says blandly, "Teal'c and I have been dating for years. Wait. Here it comes."

"Chevron seven locked," Walter says, and the wormhole vortex fountains across the ramp.

"Whoa!" Fergie says, clutching at her arm.

"It disintegrates anything in its path," she says. "That's why we stand back here."

"Ooooh. Good thing."

"Okay," Cam says. "Move 'em out."

He goes first. She and Fergie go next. Sammy and Teal'c are behind them. Fergie hesitates in front of the Event Horizon. Everyone does, the first time. Jack had to push her through it. "Just close your eyes and step through," she says.

"Oh no," he says. "I want to see everything. One, two, three--"

They step through. He's leaning heavily on her arm. Major Rackham greets them, and welcomes Fergie to the Alpha Site. Rackham offers them a tour. Dani says they'd like to start with the surface.

"Not much to see out there," the Major says. "It's night right now."

"That's okay," Cam says.

The Alpha Site is built into the side of a mountain, all on one level. All they have to do is walk out. One of the things they do here is advanced testing of the 302s. There are a couple of them in the Hangar Bay, which is the main route to the outside. Ferguson is exhausted, but even so, the sight of them makes his eyes light up.

" _That's_ what you were flying when you wiped out in Antarctica?" he says.

"That's it," Cam says. "Take you for a spin later." He sounds easy and cheerful. She can hear the strain underneath. Probably nobody else can.

They walk outside. There are benches outside the hangar, and a long landing strip stretches off into the distance. They walk over to the benches and she and Fergie sit down. Sammy goes back and asks an airman to shut down the hangar lights for a few minutes. When he does, the sky over P4X-650 snaps into sharp focus.

Bright alien stars. Three moons. Two of them are tiny and fast, the third one is huge—about six times the size of Earth's—but not nearly as dense; 650 is tectonically stable. The big moon is more like a floating blob of jelly, according to Sammy; in a few thousand years at most, Sammy says it will probably be gone. Meanwhile, it's a really impressive sight. It's a deep orange color, and the other two moons, white and gleaming and polished smooth by their occasional passes through the larger one, do their best to eclipse it several times a night.

"Those are Faith, Hope, and Love," Sammy says, pointing at the moons. "The big one is Love."

"First Corinthians," Cam says. "That's one of the great things about this job. You get to name all kinds of things."

"You ever name anything, Cam?" Fergie asks.

"Just the meatloaf in the SGC Commissary," Cam says lightly. "And you don't want to know what I named it."

After a few minutes the hangar lights go back on, but they stay out there for another half hour, watching the alien sky.

"It was all worth it," Fergie finally says. "Getting to see all this."

"It's a sight," Cam agrees. "C'mon. Let's go inside. You get a couple of hours of rack-time, and I'll take you up in one of the 302s as soon as it's light out."

"S'matter, Shaft? Scared of the dark?" Fergie asks and Cam laughs.

"I just want you to get the full benefit of the experience. Can't do that if you can't see the ground. Sam, you and Dani want to see if Major Rackham's got a spare bed around here?"

They're dismissed, obviously, so off they go.

"This is going to hit him hard," Sammy says once they're out of earshot. "He's known Major Ferguson for years."

"I know," Dani says. And it isn't fair, coming right on top of _Prometheus_. And there's nothing she can do to make it any better.

#

Cam goes off with Fergie to a bunk-room. Dani checks her watch. 1600 hours back at the SGC.

"Lunch?" she suggests. Or dinner, or whatever. She wonders what time it actually is here.

After ... food (and fortunately there _is_ food available in the Commissary), Sammy goes off to poke around the Alpha Site. Dani and Teal'c find the rec-room and a chessboard.

"Colonel Mitchell believes he is responsible for Major Ferguson's condition," Teal'c says, as they set up the pieces.

"That's right," she says. "He told me there was some kind of accident. He didn't tell me what it was. But he says he would have died except for what Fergie did. And Fergie was injured."

"Was it not Major Ferguson's choice to go to Colonel Mitchell's aid?" Teal'c asks.

"Probably. They were friends." She realizes she's already talking about Fergie in the past tense. " _Are_ friends," she corrects herself.

"It is fitting one friend should sacrifice his life for another," Teal'c says, looking at her.

She sighs. "Yes. But it sucks—it causes sorrow—to be the one who survives." After so many years, she glosses her slang automatically, even though she suspects Teal'c really doesn't need a lot of the footnotes any more. (And she knows he's talking about Jack, and Jack always said dying was his business, and she has no intention of ever being okay with that.)

"If no one survives, there is no one left to honor the memory of the dead. With no one to remember them, the dead have no existence at all."

"That's true, I suppose." Still no comfort.

They flip a coin to decide who gets white. Teal'c wins the toss, but he chooses black anyway. He usually does. He might win anyway. Teal'c's good at chess.

A couple of hours later—they're still on their first game—Sammy comes in.

Dani knows—even before she says anything—Bryce Ferguson will never get that ride in the 302. She gets to her feet. Sammy shakes her head.

"He ... died a few minutes ago. In his sleep."

#

They go back to Earth, and Fergie's body goes back to Earth, and then to Iowa, and life goes on.

A week later it's Sammy's birthday. May 14th. A Sunday. It's a not-exactly-surprise party, to be held at Sammy's house, and Dani's part of the job is to get Sammy out of the way for the day so Cam and Teal'c and Cassie can get everything ready.

"Please tell me you didn't hire male strippers," Sammy pleads.

"Sammy! We only did that once!" Dani says virtuously. Janet's idea. An all-girl afternoon party that had been _supposed_ to be followed by a Team dinner out, but between the punch and the Jell-O shooters, they'd been so wrecked they'd arrived at Jack's house by taxi and birthday dinner had been delivery pizza and one hell of a lot of coffee. Still fun, though.

"Once was enough," Sammy says darkly.

"No. No strippers. Unless Teal'c's planning to," she adds innocently. She's timed it just right; Sammy chokes and sprays the table with diet soda. They're at the Mall, in the Food Court. Sammy's idea of being distracted involves going shopping.

"Bitch," Sammy says comprehensively. 

Dani snorts. "So ... how's Graduation coming?" she asks.

Sammy groans. "We've suffered through Senior Photo Day and the class trip to Washington. We still have Final Exams, the Senior Picnic, the Prom, and the Prom Night Afterparty. Thank god she's got a dress and a date."

"Who's she going with? Dominick?"

Sammy laughs. "Dani, Dominick was _two years ago_. She's seeing somebody named Justin now. I'm given to understand that he's a "mad beast," whatever that means."

"Presumably it's good," Dani says. "Slang is hard to interpret accurately from outside the subculture that uses it. That's part of the point."

"Well it works," Sammy sighs. "Half the time these days I can't figure out a single thing she's saying."

#

When they get to Sammy's house around five, it's been elaborately decorated. Streamers, balloons, banners (Teal'c and Cassie both look very pleased with themselves). Dani meets the "mad beast," who is actually a very shy young man with multiple piercings and several tattoos. Cassie's come a long way since Hanka.

It's not as big a party as hers was last July, but there are about a dozen people there. A couple of Cassie's friends (hardly fair to torture her without giving her backup, Dani thinks with amusement), them, some others among their closer coworkers. Cam has apparently reveled in the opportunity to cook for the masses. The cake is a layer cake, covered with fresh strawberries. A single candle on top. The presents range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Clothes, scarves, books, the inevitable gift certificates. Cam's gift is a new motorcycle helmet with flames painted on the sides. Cassie's is a new dress watch, delicate and feminine and gold. Teal'c's gotten Sammy a large glass fish that lights up, changes colors, and plays a selection of popular tunes. And Dani got her jewelry. An odd choice from her, but she saw it (pretty much by accident, shopping on-line last month) and she couldn't resist. She knows Sammy wears jewelry. Sammy likes to dress up. It's a circle on a chain, in diamonds. A little like the Stargate. But just a plain circle, so nobody will know. Except Sammy. She swears she adores all of them. Dani only hopes Cassie won't ask which present Sammy liked best. Or if she does, she'll do it after they all leave. Since it's a Sunday (tomorrow's a workday, and work starts early) the party breaks up early. Dani takes Teal'c back to the Mountain. When they leave (almost the last to go), Cam is still there.

#

There's chocolate on her desk when she arrives Monday morning. The traditional covert offering. She wonders how he manages it. Not because her door is locked—his passcard can override hers to let him into her office; Team Commander's privilege—but because it means he needs to be up and in at a harrowingly early hour to get down to her office before she does.

There's something else here too. It gleams. She picks it up. A rose. A gold rose.

She prods it a little, and decides—tentatively—there's a live rose (formerly alive, anyway) under the gold.

Okay. That might be disturbing. Chocolate she can deal with. And the fairly-steady parade of books that keep arriving, because apparently in addition to haunting grocery stores, Cam haunts bookstores on his days off, and picks up anything he thinks she might like. His choices have been amazingly accurate so far.

But nobody has ever given her flowers before. She's wildly allergic to flowers, and anybody who knows her at all well knows that. Especially to roses. She'd spent her entire childhood (trailing around after Nick) sniffling and sneezing her way through the jungles of Mexico and Central America.

She's not allergic to this one. Gold-plated. Safe. Cam isn't safe. Not in any sense of the word.

Not safe for her to know—though there's not a lot of way for her to avoid it; she's used up every single marker she has with Landry at this point, and he isn't going to want to listen to any requests from her for reassignment or a sabbatical or even a TDY—and not _safe_. They've had a reasonable breathing-space in the past week, but it won't last. SG-1 is First Line and First Contact. Things will heat up again soon.

She twirls the rose between her fingers. He went home for Christmas last year. Home to his family. How many years before he doesn't want to do that any more? Because the gulf between his life—his reality—and theirs has become so great he just can't cross it? He'll be an alien on his own planet.

Just like she is.

She doesn't, actually, wish that fate on anyone.

It takes her a while to figure out just what to say.

#

"I've been thinking, Cam."

"Be surprised if you weren't."

He's down in her office. Again. She can practically set her watch by him. Any day they don't have a mission—or a crisis—sometime between 1500 and 1600, Cam will wander into her office, idle around for anything up to half an hour, and wander out again. She's never really figured out why he does it. Sometimes it's to bring her one of the books he finds, but not always. He'll talk about nothing-at-all—Base gossip, usually—or poke at her until she finds herself giving him a lecture on something he can't possibly have any interest in. But he listens as if he's fascinated. And then he goes off again.

Maybe it's his way of taking a coffee break.

But today she's glad he has such a fixed routine, because she actually has something to say to him.

"Well, you know, you've been really good for us. Kept us out of trouble. Gotten us out of a lot of scrapes. Organized that basketball league."

"Yeah." He grins at her. "Think I can interest you in joining?"

She ignores this. She isn't going to be diverted.

"And it's all going to look really great on your record. I mean ... I think you should apply for a transfer."

He's sitting on the corner of her worktable. He never does unless it's absolutely empty, but today it was, so he's there. He looks at her, frowning slightly—not as if he's in the least angry, but as if he's listening intently, hearing her out.

He always does that.

"Cam, if you stay ... people who stay here ... something happens to them. I've been here a long time. I've seen it. It doesn't always show on the outside. The people ... they all look perfectly normal. They can even act as if they're normal. But they're not. _We're_ not. We're changed. And we try to live with it, but, sometimes ... some of us ... we can't. Nobody talks about it. We all cover it up. General Hammond did. I'm sure General Landry does too. I don't think it's happened to you, yet. But it will."

"I know it will," Cam answers quietly. "Don't mean this isn't important enough to do anyway."

He's listened when she's warned him of danger before. Why not this time? A normal life seems like the greatest prize she can imagine, and he's throwing his chance for one away. She can't protect him. She can't protect anyone. Stupid to have even tried. 

"You're even more of an idiot than I thought you were," she says contemptuously.

He slips off the table and stands staring down at her. He cocks his head, studying her—not angry, but as serious, as focused, as she's ever seen him. A little shocked, perhaps, at her words. A bit saddened.

"You don't think this is important enough to keep doing no matter what?" he asks.

She blinks in surprise. Of course she does. It's more than important. It's _vital_. There's nobody else on Earth—or (actually) off it—who can do what she does, and there isn't really any other place she'd rather get up in the morning and go to than Stargate Command, but...

Cam.

"I _hate_ you," she says, her voice low and ugly. "Go ahead and get yourself killed. See if I care."

And suddenly he grins at her, and the seriousness of the moment before is gone as if it never existed, and she believes—just for an instant—that he'll never change, he'll always be Cam.

"And you can come drop flowers on my grave. If there is one," he says lightly.

She takes a deep breath. "Oh, no. They'll have to send somebody else to drop flowers on both of us." He's not dying without her. She doesn't know how she's going to keep that promise, but right now she means it. 

He takes a step forward, closing the distance between them, and drops a hand to her shoulder. "That's the spirit!" he says cheerfully. It's so easy for him to touch her; it always has been. She paid a high price to learn the American concept of personal boundaries; from Day One Cam has negated all her hard-learned lessons as if they'd never existed. "Walk right up to the gates of Hell and go down shooting." And oh god, she knows he will. Cam has a quality about him she can only call "innocence," though how he can still possess it after all he's seen and done, she doesn't know. Purity of spirit, maybe, like a knight in a medieval romance: he'll do what's right because he believes there _is_ a "right." And that serving it is more important than anything else. She's not quite sure she believes in right and wrong the way he does. But she believes in her work. 

_Their_ work.

"Well, usually when I go walking up to the gates of Hell I just walk out the other side," she says. "It's not that hard. I'll show you how." Maybe she can at least keep him alive a little longer. Doesn't the universe owe her that much?

"Sounds like a plan to me. C'mon over to my place tonight. I'll make dinner and you can give me lessons on how to make it through Certain Death with only a few little temporary setbacks."

"I, um..."

"Seven o'clock. Don't be late."

And he's on his way out of her office, and she realizes that instead of talking Cam into leaving the SGC, she's made a _dinner date_ with him.

Not what she had in mind.

Such a bad idea.

She looks—inevitably—at the rose. She's duct-taped it to the wall. She sighs.

She really has to make things clear to Cam.

#

But she presents herself at his door at more-or-less the appointed hour, because, well, a conversation of that sort is really much better conducted away from the SGC, just to begin with. Hard to be sure of where to start, though. What, exactly, can she accuse him of? Inappropriately providing her with chocolate and mind-numbingly-dull (except to her) books? Playing slippery semantic games? What if he doesn't mean what she thinks he means?

What if he does? If _"honey"_ is the colloquial Southern term of address used for female strangers (either politely or otherwise), and _"babe"_ is similarly employed for close female friends and family, then _"baby"_ must exclude both groups: a term reserved for use in connection with those women who are neither strangers, family, nor simply close friends. 

_Meryt._ Beloved.

The idea Cam thinks of her that way is appalling. She's not sure whether to accuse him of it or not. Vernacular is a slippery thing. Maybe _"baby"_ also means "simple-minded archaeologist." She's fairly sure it doesn't. She thinks of his Christmas present to her. That took work. So. What to do?

She's still trying to decide when Cam opens the door.

"Most people knock," he says. He grins at her and drapes an arm around her shoulders. "Thinking?"

"Semantics," she says, just a little breathlessly. "Cultural contexts."

"C'mon into the kitchen," he says. "You can tell me all about it."

The kitchen smells wonderful.

"Nothing fancy," Cam says. "Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and tomato salad. Have to say, though, most of 'em are a disgrace to the name."

"Of tomato?" she guesses.

"Guess I'm spoiled," Cam says. "You pretty much have to grow your own to get really good ones."

"I'm sure Sergeant Siler would be happy to build you a hydroponics tank," she suggests. 

Cam shudders theatrically. "Baby, you have no soul at all!"

"You already know that," she points out reasonably. "You already know a lot of things about me. Frankly, I don't see why you like me at all." She hesitates over the word "like." Just a little.

Cam smiles a bit and picks up an enormous knife. He starts slicing the despised and excoriated tomatoes. "Beer's in the fridge, you want one."

She gets herself a beer.

Maybe he just wants to have sex with her. That would fit—reasonably well—with the paradigm she's developing. Not as if she hasn't been viewed as a trophy before. Lots of times, on Earth and off it. Alpha males are sexually-competitive, and if Cam isn't a typical Alpha type, he's close enough. He knows she's promiscuous. If he wants her, why hasn't he just propositioned her? Has he, and has she just mis-read his signals? Or is there some reason he's waiting for her to proposition him?

She could. Set terms. A weekend of whatever he wants, and then never again. The thrill of novelty and conquest would be slaked, and she's pretty sure she's not that exciting. They could both move on.

And she'd miss him.

No matter what lurid tales Sammy's told, Dani's pretty sure Cam would be a disappointment in bed, because men almost always are. Her image of him would be inevitably tarnished. And afterward, since he had what he wanted, well, he'd stop trying to romance her (if that's what he's doing now). The attention he's paying now would stop—the little gifts, the afternoon visits, his constant attempts to insinuate himself into her daily life.

Wouldn't it?

She doesn't know. She's too close to the situation _to_ know. She's always praised for her brilliant analyses of situations and cultures, but it's easy when they're alien. You can see anything clearly you're not involved in.

"When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember your original intention was to drain the swamp," she says aloud, and Cam laughs.

"True words," he says. "You want to get the heavy cream out of the icebox? Not the whipping cream. The heavy cream."

She sorts through cartons in the refrigerator until she finds the one he wants. Who knew cream came in so many varieties? And apparently he buys them all. She brings it over to the sink. He's pouring the water out of a pot of potatoes.

"I thought you said we were having mashed potatoes," she says.

"And I bet you think they come out of a box," he answers teasingly. He then delivers quite a long lecture on the relative virtues of potato-masher-mashed potatoes versus those prepared with a ricer, with an electric mixer (apparently very bad) with a hand mixer (nearly as bad) or with a fork. Cam is firmly of the "fork" school, saying that the few unavoidable lumps in the resultant potatoes are entirely offset by the undeniably-superior flavor. "'Course it's more work. But nothing worth having i'n't worth working for. What you think?"

She thinks he's happy right now: the elisions—dropped words, dropped consonants, are displaying strongly in his speech.

"There's cream in mashed potatoes?" she asks.

"If you do 'em right."

Cream, and apparently quite a lot of butter. She wonders what's for dessert. It will probably be equally lethal.

"You know, if the whole idea is staying alive here," she says, "I'm not completely sure meals like this are the best way to go about it."

"And _I_ think between Commissary food and all the meals we miss offworld, one or two dinners like this ain't gonna make much of a dent," Cam says.

"You really don't like the Commissary food, do you?"

"I can't believe you do."

"It's not that bad."

"Baby, 'not that bad' is _not_ the way to run your life."

"Didn't you tell me once that boring was good?"

"In flying, not food." He puts the bowl of now-mashed potatoes into the oven and takes out the chicken. It looks like a picture of a chicken in a magazine. He lifts it carefully out onto a platter, and then starts sifting flour into the pan. "Makin' gravy," he says, off her look. "Can't have potatoes without gravy."

"At least the Commissary food isn't trying to crawl off the plate," she says, continuing the previous conversation. "Wait till your first _really_ exotic alien banquet. If it isn't actually poisonous, sometimes you have to eat it."

"So what's the weirdest thing you ever ate?"

"Weirdest or most disgusting? And on or off Earth? And... in whose opinion?"

"Oh, knock yourself out," Cam says easily.

"Well, I'm pretty sure live alien insects has to top the list. They were, um, sort of a beetle. They, um, served them in hollowed out gourds. You had to keep closing the lid, or your dinner would go running off."

Cam snorts faintly with amusement. "Tasted like chicken?" he asks.

"More like glue, I think. But it was a case of eating with the locals or being killed. Or fighting our way out, and having to kill all of them. So we ate."

"All of you?"

"I ate the most. They let us go, and I threw up all the way back to the Gate. Aside from that, the usual: sheep's eyeballs, snake, monkey, bat, the usual assortment of alien lizards--"

"Lizards?" Cam asks.

"Staple meat animal on Abydos," she explains. "All parts of the _mastaadge_ are inedible—the plants they browse on are filled with alkaloids, and it concentrates in their meat and milk. There are goats, but they aren't slaughtered that often, because they're more valuable for their hair and their milk. So it's mostly lizard. And a couple of insects. Cooked, though."

"Well, now I know what to get you for a special treat. Chocolate-covered ants."

"Don't think I wouldn't eat them if I was hungry enough," she says.

Cam nods, pouring the gravy into a gravy boat. "So what was the _best_ alien food you ever had?" he asks.

"Nox fruit," she answers instantly. Even thinking about it still makes her mouth water. "I don't even know what it was. But it was _wonderful_ ," she says wistfully.

"I guess it makes up for the alien bugs," he says.

"It does."

They aren't all bad memories.

#

It should feel odd and uncomfortably _pointed_ to be having dinner alone with Cam—not a Team Night, not the aftermath of a Team Night, nobody else here but them—but he doesn't let it be. They talk about work—the new 303 that's being built: _Daedalus_ will be Asgard top to bottom, and faster than _Odyssey_ , and they're hoping to get funding to put another one into production immediately, which will give them three—they talk about Cassie. She's going to be spending the summer in Europe—July and August—on a work/study program before coming home to start college in the fall. Sammy's a little twitchy about that, but it isn't as if Cassie hasn't had to fend for herself a lot of the time since Janet died anyway. Dani knows it's been a strain—for Sammy, for Cassie. There have been times when Dani's wanted to grab Cassie and just _shake_ her, and say the things to her she's pretty sure Sammy will never say: _You should be grateful! We saved your life twice! We brought you back from Hanka, and four years later Janet risked everything to make Nirrti cure you of the mindfire virus! And then we killed Nirrti, too. You owe us!_

Nobody should say those things. Nobody should hear them. She knows Cassie knows Nirrti's dead, because they made sure to tell her. Nirrti had haunted Cassie's nightmares for a long time.

"Going to be kind of ... empty, with Cassie gone," she says aloud.

"Well, maybe Sam'll get out more. She works too hard," Cam says. He regards her, eyebrows raised, in a fashion that indicates maybe he thinks Dani works a little too hard, too.

"You should get out more, too," she says. She's found the conversational opening she needs, and she's going to use it. No matter how much it hurts. "See someone. You know. Date."

"I might be seeing someone now," Cam says, sounding amused. "Or hoping to."

"I really don't think you can make plans on the basis of 'hoping,' Cam," she says carefully. "They could be uninterested. Completely uninterested. In having anything to do with you. Ever."

He's smiling, and the smile doesn't fade, though she feels she's been both clear and tactful. "And—like I've said before—that's my problem, nobody else's. Whatever— _they_ —do, not gonna change my mind."

"Even if it's hopeless?" she asks.

"Even if," he agrees.

"You could do better," she suggests, but he's shaking his head.

"Baby, you don't have to worry about this. This is my problem. Not a thing you have to do about it."

Well, fine. She's had an issue-raising heart-to-heart chat with Cam, and it's solved precisely _nothing._

It's not exactly that he's stubborn. She knows how to deal with intractable opposition. Wear it down, go around it, ignore it, confront it head-on until it cracks. And none of these methods have ever worked on Cam. Not even now, because while she _should_ escalate the conversation into a new level of confrontation, she finds herself discussing dorm food instead, and survival packages from home, and then they're off on the topic of the best things to put into college survival packages, and then Cam's talking about fudge recipes and saying he can't believe in all the time he's been here he's never made fudge.

"You might have had more important things to do with your time," she says.

"Well, it's pretty damned easy," he says. "C'mon. I'll show you."

So they put the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and make fudge. It isn't as easy as all that. The mixture has to be stirred constantly, or it will burn. Cam does most of the stirring. He lets her pour the mixture out into the greased pan.

"Now what?" she asks, staring at it.

"Cool, set, slice, and eat. Should be ready to go by the time you leave. Ready for dessert?"

"Not yet. Coffee, though."

"Coming up."

So he makes coffee, and they go off to the living room with it, and he asks her what kind of music she likes, and she looks through his CD collection and doesn't recognize any of the names and asks him to pick something he likes. And he picks out something he calls "classic Springsteen" and feeds it into the disc player and comes over and sits down on the couch and says, "So, how do you cheat Death?"

And she says, entirely without thinking: "You'd know." Because in April she went back and read everything she could find on the Antarctic campaign, and Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell was trapped in the wreckage of his 302 for fifteen hours before the search parties found him. They weren't searching for survivors. They didn't think there were any. They were recovering wreckage. And if the 302s weren't designed to minimize heat-loss against the cold of space, he would have frozen to death before they found him.

And he says, "Yeah, stubborn's a plus. Momma always said I didn't know when to give up."

She was expecting, she realizes, he'd be angry again. Because she mentioned Antarctica. But he's never been unfair or unreasonable. _So unlike present company,_ she admits, if only to herself.

"It helps," she says. "Also useful if you can manage to get killed around the Nox or the Asgard. Both races have the ability to raise the dead—as long as they haven't been dead very long. At least as far as we know."

"Okay," Cam says, nodding. "Got that."

"Sarcophagus. We've been trying to get our hands on one for years, although ... I'm not really sure it's a good idea. I'm not sure there's any limit to the revivification abilities of one, either. The more badly you're injured, the longer it takes to heal you, though. And it won't make you younger, and it won't fix genetic disorders: Sammy guesses it works by reading your DNA and rebuilding you from that."

"Kind of following the blueprints?" Cam says.

"Pretty much exactly. It's idiot-proof, too. If you can get it open, and get inside, the machine does all the rest. It opens when it's done. But the best thing, Cam, is to _not need it_."

"Well, hey. You know what Woody Allen says."

She gives him a blank look and Cam grins at her. "'I want to achieve immortality through not dying,'" he quotes.

"Nice plan," she says, slowly. And maybe even funny, if you don't know that many _Goa'uld_.

"I'm still working out some of the kinks," Cam admits.

They go on to discuss music. She actually knows a lot (on a theoretical basis) about rock and roll, since it has its roots in African music. They end up discussing Delta Blues. Cam turns out to be a fan: the reason the music isn't represented here is that his collection is on 78s, stored at home.

Dessert is peach pie.

And she drives home with a couple of pounds of home-made fudge sitting on the seat beside her and realizes she hasn't solved anything, hasn't settled anything. Okay, she hasn't made anything worse, which is nice. And it's true that knowing _Cameron Mitchell is crazy_ is hardly new information. She's known that for a while.

Maybe he'll just give up.

It's true he's well, sort of determined. But he's also too smart to pursue a _completely_ hopeless cause.

But. There's Team Night. A misnomer, she thinks. Because it used to be once a month, and then it was twice a month, and now, well, every Friday they're on Earth, they're at Cam's. More home than home.

She keeps telling herself she won't go. She won't _say_ she won't go. She just won't show up. She'll go to a bar instead (last test back: all safe). She never does.

She knows it's wrong.

He loves her. ( _Why_ he loves her, knowing what he knows about her, is a mystery, but it's a little difficult to argue with the facts.) She ought to stop ... trading on it. 

It's hard to see how. Because he isn't trying to _pressure_ her into anything. Okay, not into anything different than the things _Sammy's_ always trying to pressure her into: eating and sleeping. And she gets a lot less nagging from Cam. (Most of the time.) He isn't mooning around making wounded puppy dog eyes at her. He isn't throwing his obviously-unrequited passion in her face as something she has to _do something about._

_"Baby, you don't have to worry about this. This is my problem. Not a thing you have to do about it."_

He'd told her the truth. 

_"I've known him for a long time. He says what he means, and he says everything he means..."_

She'd know if he lied to her. She may not understand him all that well, but she'd certainly know if he were lying. And he isn't.

The only one here with a problem is her.

Nothing new there.

So she watches him flirt with everything female in the SGC—nothing new there either—and with Sammy (though she's pretty sure, now, Sammy was actually telling the truth about her and Cam) and she doesn't like it, and she doesn't know how to stop not liking it. He doesn't flirt with her, but then, she doesn't know how to flirt anyway. And she follows him through the Gate, and on the other side, he's still Cam, but he's Colonel Mitchell, too, and no matter what else is going on in his mind, the mission priorities will get sorted out properly and he won't ... play favorites.

_"He doesn't actually feel any differently about you now than he did, oh, last July."_

And one morning in early June she's awakened by someone banging on her door, and she opens it, and it's Cam, and he's wearing the biker jacket and looking pleased with himself and saying "come for a ride," and she looks past him, and there are three motorcycles in her driveway, and Sammy and Teal'c and Cassie are there. All looking damned cheerful for 0800 Saturday morning.

But she stomps off to get dressed. And when she comes back out, Cam says, "you'll need this," and he's helping her into a leather jacket—it fits just fine—and zipping it up and then she's shutting her door and following him down the walk. And she figured she'd be up behind Sammy—Sammy's taken her out on one of her bikes before—because she didn't know Teal'c could ride, and whether he can or not, nobody in their right mind would want to ride with him, she's pretty sure.

But Cassie gets up behind Sammy, so Dani takes the helmet Cam hands her and gets on behind him.

Good thing she brought her sunglasses, because the day is bright. One of the last days the five of them will have together. And yesterday four of them were on some planet on the other side of the galaxy, fighting their way back to the Gate through a hurricane; they'd gone in to do a recon of what they thought might be a Jaffa prison camp, only to find out no, it was a Jaffa _training_ camp, and okay, intel is intel, and they needed to know that too, but it would have been nice if they'd known in advance that it was one of Anubis's, because then they would have known there'd be Super Soldiers there and not stuck around _quite_ so long. They'd hoped the weather would cover their retreat, and it hadn't. The only thing that saved them was speed.

_Cognitive dissonance_ , she thinks. The difference between today and yesterday is so profound it's hard to believe the two events belong in the same lifetime, let alone in the same twenty-four hour stretch of time. It's the thing that breaks the Gate Teams. More than injuries, more than trauma, more than loss. Just the strangeness. But she holds on to Cam, and leans into the turns the way Sammy taught her to, and the sun beats down, and the speed of the bikes is a normal human sort of thrill. They ride through the city and out, and stop at a roadside diner for breakfast, and Cam tells a long rambling story that probably isn't true about the time he decided to go cross-country on the bike he owned at the time. And they ride on.

At lunchtime they stop to gas up the bikes and buy sodas, and stop at a picnic area a few miles down the road. Lunch is in the saddlebags: sandwiches and apples and cookies and bags of chips. It's all so normal. It's the point, she realizes. Holding on to "normal" as hard as you can.

There's a Frisbee in the saddlebags, too, and after lunch Cam divides them up into teams (Teal'c and Sammy on one team, her and Cam and Cassie on the other) and they play cutthroat Frisbee for a while. She's terrible. Cam and Cassie are really good. Teal'c has the advantage of size and reach. The teams are pretty evenly balanced.

Their last stop of the day is Michelle's, downtown. Dani's favorite ice-cream parlor, actually. They held Cassie's first Earth birthday party here, for her entire class (the next year, acculturated, she swore she was far too old for "kid things" like that). Now, on the cusp of adulthood, she's willing to be pleased by "kid things" again. Or at least by ice cream. The specialty of the house is an enormous sundae called "The Mountain," containing over a gallon of ice cream. It's free if you can finish it by yourself. They order two. One for Teal'c, and one for the rest of them. Teal'c actually finishes his, and they switch the dishes hastily, because there are photos on the wall of everyone whose ever finished one of these, and they're all pretty sure General Landry wouldn't approve of Teal'c's picture being on display. Teal'c's a little disappointed, though.

#

They're here for Prom Night. Cassie walking out in her formal dress, and she's not a child any longer, not an awkward rebellious adolescent. In her face, Dani can see the woman she's going to become.

They force Justin to come into the house so they can take pictures. ("So there's some way for the police to identify their _bodies_ ," Sammy mutters when the door closes behind them, and Cam laughs, and tells her _everybody_ survives Prom Night, and Sammy glares at him and says, "I didn't," and Cam goes off to make her a drink.)

They all wait up with Sammy until two-thirty, when Cassie finally comes trailing home in the rented limousine Sammy insisted on. And she looks a lot more rumpled than she did when she left, and Dani can see that Sammy doesn't know quite whether to start screaming or just cry, and Cam hugs Cassie and tells her to go get changed and he'll make everybody a late supper. And over supper they get all the details of the Prom, and the afterparty, and find out it was "oh, god, Aunt Sam, so _boring_ , so Justin and I and some of the other kids took the limo and picked up some of our decks and went over to the Mall and went skateboarding."

So just as well Sammy didn't get the chance to say anything.

#

They're there to see Cassie graduate, though it's a mad scramble. All four of them bail out of the Mountain as fast as if the _Goa'uld_ have followed them through the Gate and getting to the Colorado Springs High School Auditorium is their only hope of saving Earth. (What debrief?) They drive directly there—ought to be dressed up for it, but there's no time—and plunk themselves into their reserved seats barely in time to see Cassandra Frasier walk across the stage.

She looks out into the audience, and sees them, and her face lights up. She waves her diploma excitedly, and Sammy and Dani wave back.

"Oh thank god, thank god," Sammy is saying, and Dani isn't sure whether it's because they were here for Cassie's graduation, or because Cassie's one step closer to Safe.

"Dry your eyes, babe," Cam tells her, handing Sammy a handkerchief (he's the only man Dani knows who actually carries handkerchiefs). "We got here."

They got here.

They got Cassie here.

_We did it, Jack._

#

The following Friday they're back at Cam's again. Just one mission this week, and there-and-back in the same day (which is actually—supposedly—their normal schedule, and she can count on her fingers the weeks in which SG-1 has ever had a normal schedule), but the rest of the week was brutal in its own way: reports to review and file (not just SG-1's, since as a Department Head, she reviews the Mission Reports of most of the other Teams), briefings to prepare, a new Russian Team to indoctrinate (they don't always die, but even if they don't they're rotated out several times a year). She hasn't been home before midnight once this week. (If she were being paid by the hour, the US Government would be bankrupt.) But it's Friday, and she drives straight to Cam's right at end-of-shift (one more minute here and somebody's blood is going to be on the walls). She beats him there, in fact—his car isn't in the lot when she arrives—and she sits down on his steps to wait. She ought to go somewhere else, but she doesn't have the energy. About half an hour later he drives up.

"Baby, we gotta get you a key to this place," he says, coming up the stairs. His arms are full of bags. She takes one, and he fishes in his pants pocket for his keys, opening the door. "Didn't expect you this early."

"Oh, I could--"

"C'mon."

She follows him in.

"Stopped at the grocery," he's saying cheerfully. "Wanted to pick up a few things." He sets his bag on the counter, takes hers from her arms. Begins to unpack. He looks so normal. Dog-tags, but in Colorado Springs you see them a lot. Air Force t-shirt (ditto). Jeans. Boots.

"Cam, how many missions have we been on together?" she asks.

"Sixty-two," he answers promptly, and she's sure he's kept an accurate count.

"In less than a year? That's a lot."

"Well, I try to keep busy," he says.

His days aren't quite as long as hers, but they're long. Paperwork. And as a senior officer—by position if not by rank—he has other responsibilities too, things that look as if they could be skipped, and can't. Things like making sure everything's all right with the families of the enlisted SGC personnel. The military is one very large, very nosy family: it may not look after its dependents well sometimes, but it does look after them.

"Do you think we live faster than other people?" she asks idly.

He glances at her. "You're not talking nanites now, are you?"

She shakes her head. "It's just... sometimes so much happens in so short a time—a density of experience—that events that are closely-related temporally seem farther apart than they ought to."

"You mean it's a long way from Monday to Friday?"

"Sort of." Or from February to June.

"Well in that case, the weekends ought to be longer, too. Stands to reason."

"Never works out that way, though," she says with a sigh.

"We'll make the most of what we've got, then," he says. "Beer?"

"Coffee," she says. "Or I'll never make it to the movie."

She drinks coffee while he prepares dinner. Breaded pork chops are on the menu tonight. Sweet potato casserole. Corn bread. Black-eyed peas. Corn on the cob. The late-afternoon summer sun slants through the kitchen window, gilding his skin as he moves from stove to counter to refrigerator. A quiet domestic scene.

Normal.

"Do you want me to ... do something?" she asks, realizing she's been all-but-dozing-off, sitting here watching him. She sips her coffee. It's cold.

"No, no. Ever'thing under control." There are pots boiling on the stove now, and things in the oven. "When Sam and Teal'c get here, we fry up the pork chops, toss the corn in the boiler, and then ... we eat." He goes to the cupboard for another bowl.

"Then why are you still cooking?"

"Dessert."

"Some people _buy_ dessert."

"Now that's just because they don't know any better."

"Or don't have time to cook."

"Or don't know anybody who _does_ cook."

"A white cake?" she asks a few minutes later, trying not to sound disappointed, because, well, it's not that she _only_ likes chocolate.

"Caramel Peach Self-Icing Cake," he says.

Well, that sounds good. "How can a cake ice itself?"

"You'll see."

He takes a bowl of sliced peaches (fresh, prepared ahead of time and how the hell does he _do_ it all?) out of the refrigerator and layers them carefully over the top of the batter in the pan, then comes over to her, bowl in one hand, peach slice in the other.

"Leftovers," he says. She opens her mouth obediently, allowing him to feed her several peach slices, one at a time. He eats some too.

"Now we frost it," he says, taking the bowl away just as it's occurring to her that there's something bordering-on-erotic to being within half an inch of sucking sugared peach juice off his fingers.

"It isn't cooked yet."

"That's the point."

The frosting is thick as tar—brown sugar, caramels, and butter. He ladles it carefully over the peach slices until the surface of the cake is shiny and brown, then offers her the spoon and saucepan. "Best part," he says.

She takes the spoon and puts it in her mouth. The sweetness is overpowering. "Good," she mumbles around the spoon.

The doorbell rings, and Cam goes to let Sammy and Teal'c in.

#

After dinner, it's time for movies. They're never the point. They almost always talk right through them. Sometimes _to_ them. Cam and Sammy were picking them this week. Cam picked "action" and Sammy chose the movies. She flourishes an all-too-familiar package.

 _"No!"_ Dani wails.

"Yes!" Sammy says gleefully. "It's been a while since we've seen it. It's an action movie—so Cam should like it—it's got historical interest—so you should like it--"

" _Sammy!_ It's _Raiders of the Lost Ark! Please_ tell me you didn't bring the other three!" They're worse. If possible.

"Of course not. Would I do that to you? I brought _Tomb Raider_ and _The Librarian: Quest for the Spear_ ," Sammy says sweetly. 

" _How_ can I ever repay you?" Dani says. Maybe she can find some really horrible movies with astrophysicists. There have to be some out there. Maybe she'll make Sammy watch _Contact_ again.

"Oh, you'll find a way."

But the Rules are that whatever is brought has to be watched, unless _everybody_ agrees not to watch it, and she might be able to get Teal'c's vote but that's probably all. So Sammy puts in the disk and sits down next to Cam, and Dani sits down next to Teal'c, muttering darkly.

"Y'all want to speak up down there? I can't quite hear you," Cam calls down the length of the couch.

"I said he'd never get tenure!" Vandal. Graverobber.

About half an hour in, Sammy waves her empty beer bottle in the air, and Dani goes off to the kitchen for another round—and to get herself a beer (first of the evening), because if Sammy's plotted an evening of archaeological mockery, she can't do it on coffee.

And she comes back to the couch, and Sammy's gone, so she hands bottles around and sits down not _exactly_ in Sammy's spot, but certainly closer to Cam than she is to Teal'c. And Cam—who's apparently engrossed in the entirely-unlikely events of a purely-mythical Cairo—reaches out an arm and snugs her firmly against him.

She ought to move, turn it into a joke, say he's obviously mistaken her for Sammy and maybe he needs to borrow her glasses. But she lets the moment go on a little too long, and Sammy's coming out of the bedroom—off to the bathroom, obviously—and without missing a beat she sits down and curls up sideways on the couch, tucking her bare feet under Dani's thigh.

So Dani sighs, and stays where she is.

#

It's an hour later, and Sammy has taken the cake out of the oven (since Cam announced he was too comfortable to move), and the Idiot Archaeologist has managed to get himself and his girl companion recaptured several times. ("Don't they have _phones_ in your 1936?" Dani snarls, and: "You know, the Egyptian government took a really dim view of people _looting their cultural treasures_ even in the Dark Ages," and: "For god's sake! _One phone call!_ Everybody at that dig site will be arrested! Do they even have _permits?_ ") The Idiot Archaeologist and his Shrill Girl Companion (who has been captured yet _again_ ) are now heading to their rendezvous with destiny: she inside a U-Boat plying the waters of the North Atlantic, he, clinging to its conning tower.

"Oh, that's going to work out _so well_ when it submerges," Dani mutters venomously. "Because of course archaeologists can _breathe under water_. I know I can."

And Cam laughs, and leans over and kisses the top of her head. "Oh, I do so love that smart mouth you got on you," he says, resting his cheek against her hair. And she feels giddy and lightheaded and very, very, awake.

_He just kissed her_. Right in front of Teal'c and Sammy. Okay, on the _head_. And he didn't _mean_ it. But still.

Still.

#

" _I'm not looking!"_ she wails as the film reaches its climax. There's no such thing as a ceremonial opening of the Ark, and if there were, it wouldn't take this form.

"I'll protect you," Cam says theatrically, wrapping both arms around her. It's all right, she tells herself, because they're playing. So she buries her face in his neck and refuses to watch again until they get to the part where the camera is panning over the armory.

"Hey," Sammy says, "I think I see the Stargate in the background!"

"Looks kind of like that place we were at in DC," Dani grudgingly admits. Now that the damned movie is _over_ , she's willing to be generous.

Sammy laughs. "I don't know how many times we've watched this, and you complain every single time."

"It's horrible every single time," she says.

"Cake," Cam says, getting up.

It really does frost itself.

They decide to watch the _Librarian_ movie next. Dani's never seen it. The protagonist, she soon discovers, is an improbable loser with an equally-improbable collection of degrees. Dani had figured they'd all sort out to their usual positions after the cake. But Sammy seems determined Dani's going to sit next to Cam tonight.

And Dani...

Unfair of her to do it. Unfair to him. But she still does. She and Sammy snipe back and forth about overeducated geeks until Cam asks if he's going to have to separate them. They shake their heads solemnly.

"Oh, god, this is bad," Sammy groans.

"You picked it," Dani says remorselessly.

"Hey! This is great art," Cam says, sounding wounded.

"Paint by numbers," Sammy says.

She's half asleep (not all asleep) by the end of the second movie, and they finish off the cake, and Sammy yawns and says "home" and Teal'c bows and Cam says he'd better pour a few more cups of coffee into Dani before he lets her go, so the other two leave, but he doesn't make a fresh pot of coffee. He opens the cabinet and takes down the Scotch. Looks at her, eyebrows raised.

And she says "sure," even though she knows that means she'll be spending the night here, because she's tired enough one drink will put her over the limit of safe-to-drive, and they both know it. And he gets another beer, and they sit on the couch, side by side, and he surfs around the channels, stopping finally on something all-too-familiar.

"Bet you know this one," he says.

She groans faintly. " _The Mummy_ , with Boris Karloff."

"Scared the crap outta me'n my brother when we were kids. Can't beat the classics."

"It's a debasement of Egyptian culture."

"Yeah, but it's really scary."

"They got everything wrong."

"They got everything wrong in _Wormhole X-Treme!_ , too, and _that's_ fun."

"You _watched_ that?"

"Hey. Stacy Monroe was hot."

"I'll tell Sammy you said so."

She finishes her drink and says, "oh, that's done it," and Cam laughs, and asks her for her keys, and she gives them to him and he goes down to her Jeep and brings up her go-bag. And she goes off to the bathroom (staggering just a bit) and washes up and changes into sweats, and comes back and the couch is made up. She tumbles onto it without a thought.

"Sleep tight," Cam says.

"Very," she mumbles.

And sleep is without dreams.

In the morning he makes pancakes and sausage. By the time she wakes up, he's already been for a run and done a couple of loads of laundry in the machines downstairs.

"Laundry," she says, looking at the plastic basket filled with clothes. "I should do that."

"Too pretty a day to waste," Cam says. "Let's go for a ride."

"Where?" she asks.

"Nowhere," he says.

And she knows she shouldn't but they do.

She's never actually ridden in his car before. It's older than he is—he says that makes it a classic. It's black and it's fast and he drives it rather the way she imagines he'd fly a plane. She suspects if he really opened it up, they could be in California by dinnertime.

"Do you miss flying?" she asks. There's nothing outside the windows now but high desert, fence, and the occasional cow.

"Yeah. Sometimes. A little. What about you?"

"Do I miss _flying_?" She hates to fly. She always has.

Cam chuckles. "No. Anything you miss? Because you're doing this?"

_A normal life_. But how can you miss what you've never had? "Not ... exactly. Just ... we never get to follow through. We find sites, but I don't get to excavate them. We contact new cultures, but I don't get to study them."

"First Contact," Cam points out.

"I know. It's a trade-off." Everything in life is.

Late in the afternoon they stop at a tiny hole-in-the-wall place (apparently one Cam knows) for lunch. The sign says "Fine Southwestern Cuisine," which is a little disturbing, but the food is good. Tacos, enchiladas, beans and rice. The foods of her later childhood. They drink fruit soda and talk about nothing in particular. Or don't talk at all. Afterward, Cam drives them back to his apartment, and she collects her things and leaves.

"Nice day," he says.

"It was."

That night she goes out to a bar.

#

Six months since she's done this, and, being here, she's not alone in her own head anymore, since this is no longer her secret life. It's no longer a case of _what would her friends think if they knew she did this_ , because Cam knows.

_"Baby, you have got to be more careful."_

She has a sudden bizarre fantasy: if she'd called him up while she was getting dressed to go out, told him where she was going and what she was going to do, he wouldn't have stopped her, wouldn't have said a word against it, but he'd have come along, he'd be here right now, at a table over in the corner, watching her six. He'd have the room right next to hers, and the connecting door would be unlocked, and he'd listen carefully for any sign of trouble. And afterward, she'd knock on it to give him the "all clear," and he'd leave, and on Monday morning he wouldn't treat her any differently.

She's pretty sure it's true.

Is the man _crazy?_

Saturday night is a party crowd night at the bars she usually goes to. It's not hard to find someone to buy her a drink. She usually turns down a few while she sorts through the offers to find the one she wants to take back to her room. She's going to be careful this time. She has no intention of staging a repeat of Gary. At the third place she tries—sometimes the unsuitable candidates are hard to shake—she finds someone she thinks will do. Blond. About her age or a little younger. He tells her he loves a lady in red (she's wearing the red dress tonight). Not the most original opening line, but it will do. She tells him her name is Alex. He smiles.

"What a coincidence. So's mine."

She doubts it, but that just means they're here for the same thing. Her pick-ups don't always tell the complete truth about their names, but it's a warning sign, and she promises herself she'll be wary. No wedding ring, nor indication of one; a point in his favor. She lets him buy her a drink and talk about himself. He works for Intel. She can tell that's true, and she relaxes a bit. Maybe he just has a geeky name like Dwayne or Sherman.

He leans in close. Lots of touching. Suggests he could show her a really good time. Fine. That's what she's here for. She says she's in town for a few days (he really hasn't asked much about her) and why don't they go up to her room for a nightcap?

He says that would be great, but why don't they have a little more fun first? There's a great late-night club he knows, not far from here. Great music. They could go, catch the last set, have a few more drinks. Then back to her room.

It seems plausible. Possibly even interesting. He's not suggesting they go to his place; she wouldn't consider that. But—as clearly as if he were standing right there—she hears Cam's voice in her head saying: _don't you do it, baby._ And so she shakes her head regretfully, and says she's really not much for late nights. And "Alex" smiles, and says he understands, and says he has to go make a phone call, and he'll be right back. 

And he doesn't come back.

And she wonders what sort of a bullet she just dodged, thanks to the fact she's now apparently receiving hallucinatory visitations of Cameron Mitchell as a distant early warning system. And she settles her tab and goes back to her room and sleeps alone.

#

The following Friday, when she arrives at the apartment (carefully making sure to arrive last), Cam hands her a key. "In case I'm not here," he says. "You can just let yourself in."

"Oh," she says. "Good."

"Guess we ought to start planning your birthday party," he says. 

"Just as long as General Landry isn't there," she says without thinking. She blinks, and remembers her last birthday party, and remembers why it was the way it was. "Guess we ought to start planning your anniversary party," she says. "A year."

In a week or so, Cam will have been here a year.

Sammy and Teal'c are battling to the death via PlayStation; she doesn't know what they're playing, but apparently it involves a lot of car chases. Sammy is yelping and groaning just as if it were all real. And probably losing. Not a good time to start a conversation. She tucks the key into her pocket and follows Cam into the kitchen. He hands her a beer without asking. There's an enormous pot on the stove. She peers into it. "Chili?"

"Won Captain Alvarez's family recipe off him in a poker game."

"You were playing for recipes?"

"Not at first," Cam says.

"Is it any good?"

"Taste."

He gets a spoon, skims a little off the top, offers her the spoon.

" _Hot_ ," she says comprehensively.

"It is that," he agrees. "Cornbread'll cut some of the heat. Add some cheese on top, sour cream for them as wants it."

"Dessert?" she asks.

"Aztec ice cream."

"Made with human hearts?" she guesses.

"Made with bittersweet chocolate and lots of cinnamon," he says. "Thought you'd like it."

She will.

It's so tempting to tell him what she _didn't_ do last Saturday night. Why? Does she want reassurance? Does she want to reassure _him?_ Neither one is—actually—appropriate. She's fairly sure about that. It's not a good thing to become dependent upon things that might vanish suddenly. And Cam ... well, she shouldn't give him any reason to think better of her than he does.

Would "worse" make a difference? She doesn't really have much scope for it. She can't imagine doing less than her best in her professional life—and so often even that isn't good enough—and she doesn't really have much personal life. Most of it, she realizes, takes place (these days) in Cam's apartment. 

Maybe she should break his dishes.

He'd just want to know what was wrong and want to fix it. Because that's what Cam does. He fixes things. They were broken— _SG-1_ was broken—when he came, and he fixed them. It's one way of leading. There are a lot of ways. All societies have leaders, and social groups are one of the things she studies. She doesn't approve of the military (not really) but after ten years clutched to its bosom, she has a fair idea of how it operates. "Command" and "leadership" are subtly different things. "Leadership" is better. You can lead people to do things you could never order them to do. Cam has never commanded them. He's always led them.

And maybe what she ought to do is _not come here at all_. But it's irresistible. A different kind of self-destruction than her usual style, she realizes vaguely, and she's not sure where it's leading. But if Cam is as constant as the sun, she's not. She's changed constantly from the moment she first saw the Coverstone. She's changing now.

Into what?

They talk about random things—the new 302 training program, the intelligence back from Atlantis, the fact the IOA is demanding _Odyssey_ be dedicated to supply and support of the Pegasus Mission (and keeping it firmly under direct IOA control, is the tacit subtext) and the Pentagon is screaming about losing one of their only two starships to intergalactic shuttle-bus service.

"Three weeks there, three weeks back, three weeks on station and three weeks Earthside to resupply," Cam says. "Three months for one full circuit. Barring emergencies."

"Which they'll always have," she says. "Considering Pegasus is apparently full of alien vampires."

"Good thing there's a 'one alien menace to a Galaxy rule,'" Cam says absently. "I'd sure hate to see the Wraith and the _Goa'uld_ team up."

"Or a _Goa'uld_ take a Wraith host," she says. She's seen the preliminary reports on the Wraith. "I think they're just what the _Goa'uld_ have been looking for for millennia: the perfect _hok'taur_."

"Evolved human?" Cam asks, raising his eyebrows. He's read the reports, too. As far as the Atlanteans know, the Wraith aren't human.

"Close enough. They feed on humans. They have to be related _somehow_ , right? And even if they aren't—they're stronger, faster, and don't need a ribbon device to kill you dead. The _Goa'uld_ would think they were perfect."

"Well, we'll worry about that when the time comes, if it does. Have some cheese."

He's taken a big block of Cheddar out of the fridge to grate it. He slices a piece off the end and pops it into her mouth.

A few minutes later Sammy—apparently defeated—comes into the kitchen in search of a beer. Cam puts his arm around her waist and hugs her and kisses her on the side of the head and puts her to work grating cheese while he makes cornbread. Sammy steals a spoonful of the chili and whoops.

" _Cameron Everett Mitchell!_ Are you trying to kill us all?"

"Cornbread!" he protests, as if cornbread is the cure for all ills. And actually, having eaten Cam's cornbread for months—breakfast, lunch, dinner, and midnight snack—Dani feels it can probably cure quite a lot of them.

"It's not that hot, Sammy," she says, feeling an obscure need to defend Cam.

"See? Dani likes it," Cam protests woundedly.

" _Dani_ will eat anything," Sammy says darkly. "You should _hear_ some of the things she's eaten."

"Well, I'm an obliging sort, but I draw the line at serving up a mess of live bugs. I'm pretty sure it'd break my lease if dinner got loose."

And Sammy grabs a dishtowel and starts smacking him over the head with it, and Cam is dancing around the kitchen, arms over his head, yelling "No hitting! No hitting!" until Teal'c comes in to see what the hell is going on.

So of course then Teal'c has to taste the chili, too. He pronounces it "acceptable." So Sammy's pretty much outvoted, and Cam swears to her if she doesn't like it— _really_ doesn't like it—he will _call out for pizza._

But by the time they eat, the chili has cooked down for another hour, and Cam serves it over big slabs of cornbread, and when Sammy takes her first tentative bite she looks surprised, then pleased, and eats two large bowls full. With sour cream and cheese, of course.

The theme for the evening is Science Fiction (Cam got to choose it), and Dani picked the movies. So they're seeing _Star Wars, Contact_ (she'll have her revenge on Sammy), and the latest remake of _War of the Worlds._

She doesn't actually see any of them, though, because even before Luke gets off Tattooine, she's gotten an idea about the Ancient language. Atlantis has sent back thousands of hours of documentation on it, and all the Ancient in Pegasus Galaxy is _the same dialect._

For that matter, the city can _talk_. And it's speaking English.

Oh, it's not that the city _itself_ can talk. But there's a sort-of library there with a hologram interface. And _that_ talks. The Mission activated it, and it didn't say a thing for six weeks, and then all of a sudden it started babbling away to them in Modern English. They keep it shut down most of the time—it's an enormous drain on the city systems, apparently, which is why the linguists on the Atlantis Mission haven't been picking its brains—but it can read Ancient and translate it into English, so the Mission has been using it for some of their most crucial translation work. She still has nothing like a syntax or a grammar for Ancient, but she now has a large collection of technical terms with accurate English translations.

When her idea hits, she picks up her backpack and goes into the kitchen. She just needs to make a few notes...

A while later she realizes there's a cup of coffee at her elbow. She gulps it down greedily. Cold. She goes to the pot to pour fresh. Back to work.

Later the pot's empty. She makes more.

And later still, she's far from _done_ , but oh, god, she may actually finally have cracked it. She doesn't think Landry will let her go to Atlantis (damn him) but she can send her notes, and maybe one of the linguists (she needs to look through the roster; she can't remember who they sent) is smart enough to follow through. (Why the _hell_ doesn't Pegasus have e-mail?)

She gets up, stretches, blinks. Stiff. There's light coming in through the kitchen window.

It's morning.

She checks her watch. _Eight o'clock?_ She goes out into the living room. Cam's sitting on the couch, reading.

"Um... morning?" she says.

Cam tilts his head back to look at her. "Yup. Time for breakfast?"

She feels unaccountably flustered. The man's watched her sleep; she isn't sure why this is different. "I, um, you..."

"Watched the movies, ate ice cream—saved you some—tried not to make too much noise. Sam said you wouldn't notice if a house fell on you, though."

She sighs, and runs a hand through her hair. "Probably not." Since apparently there'd been people in the kitchen at some point last night.

He gets to his feet. "So. I'll get the biscuits started. Why don't you grab a shower? You're probably stiff as a board from sitting up all night."

"Clear off the table," she mumbles, going back into the kitchen.

She isn't just stiff, she's wiped. Running flat-out for twelve hours, getting the flash of inspiration out of her brain and into the computer before the ideas vanished. Weeks more of connect-the-dot work to do before anybody else will be able to understand it, she knows from long experience. But the bones are there. At the moment she feels as if everything she knows has been sucked out of her brain and transferred to hard disk. She checks to be sure she saved it and backed it up (yes), closes up her computer, checks over her notes and drawings, bundles everything into the backpack. Cam is moving around the kitchen. Pans and bowls and ingredients. She takes the backpack out into the living room, patting herself down for her keys. If she's going to shower, she needs her go-bag.

Her keys aren't in her pocket. A scrap of memory surfaces from last night. Somebody saying _"Keys, Dani,"_ and her fishing them out and dropping them on the table, waving the speaker irritably away.

Her go-bag's by the door. Her keys are on top of it. She goes off to shower.

The hot water is soothing, and it only helps her realize she's completely wired on caffeine. (How many pots of coffee did she drink last night? And did she go wandering obliviously through Cam's bedroom in search of the bathroom at some point? Almost undoubtedly.) Tired before she got here, and tireder now. She allows herself a brief, entirely non-sexual, fantasy of sleeping with Cam. He'd be nice to sleep with, she thinks wistfully. Warm. Solid. And possibly she could get more than three hours of sleep at one time. Although it's more likely she'd just wake them both up screaming. 

Well, if she's going to wake up screaming, she can do that at home. After breakfast. Because apparently it is the high point of his life to feed her—and Sammy, and Teal'c—and food replaces sleep (it does, doesn't it?) and she needs one or the other if she's going to manage to drive anywhere sometime soon.

She stays in the shower until the hot water threatens to give out, then towels herself off roughly, splashes cold water on her face, dresses, and walks back to the kitchen.

Cam says, "Biscuits're in," when he sees her. The table's set, too, but there's no coffee at her place. Only a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice. She wrinkles her nose.

"From the number of filters I counted in the trash, I'm pretty sure you've had enough coffee," Cam says.

"Not nearly enough," she groans. "I still have to drive home." She props her elbows on the table and rubs her eyes.

"You'd fall asleep behind the wheel," Cam says. "I'll run you home after breakfast."

"Jeep," she says. If he drives her home, her Jeep will still be here.

"And after you've gotten some sleep, you call me, and I'll pick you up, and drive you back here, and you can get your Jeep," Cam says, apparently having had no trouble deciphering her not-sentence. "Now drink your juice. How do you want your eggs?"

"Cooked," she says, reaching for the juice.

So she gets scrambled eggs with chunks of ham diced into it, and home fries (there is apparently a rule that every meal Cam makes has to include potatoes in some form), and hot biscuits with strawberry jam, and she tries to explain to him what it was that kept her up all night, but she knows she isn't making a lot of sense. It wouldn't make much sense to another linguist at this point, either. Neither would she. If she could actually choose, she'd rather sleep here than there, for reasons she doesn't really want to think about, but it's not (in her mind) an option. So after they eat, she gathers up her things, and Cam packs up the last of the Aztec Ice Cream for her to take with her, and he drives her back to what is now, in nearly every way, her house. 

Hers legally. Hers by the intent of the previous owner. (Of Jack. She doesn't think about Jack the way she doesn't think about her parents, doesn't think about Sha're; a conscious banishment of the beloved dead from the temple of her memory. Remembering hurts too much.) The only one who doesn't think of it as hers is her.

She falls asleep on the drive over, but manages to rouse herself when they pull into the driveway. 

"You're actually going to sleep?" Cam asks. He gets out of the car when she does.

"Do I _look_ like I'm going to do anything else?"

"You look like you _ought_ to sleep," he says, not sounding entirely convinced.

"It's my plan. Don't worry if you don't hear from me tonight. I'll call you when I wake up."

"You do that." He puts an arm around her, companionably, to walk her up her front steps and into the house.

After he leaves, she switches off the ringer on the house phone, puts the ice cream in the freezer, takes her cellphone and beeper into the bedroom with her, switches on the noise suppression system, and goes to bed. Six hours later she's sitting bolt upright in bed, panting with terror. She doesn't know whether she screamed or not, but ... probably. She rolls across the bed, looking for a patch of sheet not soaked with sweat. Checks the clock. Almost 1600.

She collapses against the cool dry sheets—one advantage of a king-sized bed, there's always a new spot to move to—and groans. Enough sleep to wake her up, not enough to rest her. She'll take a break and try again.

She gets up, pads (naked) into the kitchen, gets out the ice cream and a spoon. There's nearly a pint here. She takes it into the living room and sits on the couch, chipping bits of it doggedly loose (it's good) until the whole contents of the container softens enough for her to eat it faster. There's more to it than just cinnamon, she thinks. Pepper and other spices as well. Exotic.

She decides on another shower after that. She's never been able to exhaust the hot water tanks here, but she takes the longest, hottest shower she can stand, and follows it with a good stiff drink. Probably not a regimen Sally would approve—and a complete waste of a day if it works—but she's so _tired_.

She gets back into bed again, and tosses and turns for another hour. Dozing. Each time she starts to drop off, a nightmare jerks her awake. Threshold nightmares, they're called. Another in the wonderful collection of sleep disorders she's rapidly accumulating. Around 1800 she gives up and reaches for her phone.

"You might as well come over and pick me up," she says, when Cam answers.

"You don't sound that happy about it," he answers.

She hesitates, and then decides she might as well tell him the truth. They've got a mission next week. "I didn't get much sleep."

"Sorry to hear it," he says. And he really sounds as if he is. Not as if he's going to go running off to Landry, or Sally, or (god help them all) MacKenzie. Just sorry.

"Happens," she says. "The ice cream was good."

She hears him laugh. "Three votes 'for,' then. Teal'c didn't like it as much as he could've."

"Teal'c and dairy products have an ever-changing relationship. The Jaffa don't keep milk animals."

"I'll remember that," Cam says. "Be there in a few."

She gets up and gets dressed and pokes around the house a bit, waiting. The house is stuffy, but she doesn't dare open the windows. She regards the roses at the bottom of the yard (in riotous bloom now) with basilisk disfavor and makes a note to call the yard service. Makes herself coffee and feels slightly more awake. She's watching for Cam, and is out the door and down the steps before his car rolls to a stop.

"You in a hurry to get back here?" he asks, as they pull out of the driveway again.

"Not exactly," she says (she's still too tired to get any real work done). "Why?"

"Got a package in the mail today," he says. "I could use a little help with it."

"Okay," she says, puzzled. When they get back to the apartment, and she sees the contents of the package, she understands.

DVDs. Specifically, Chinese movies. Even more specifically, Chinese Martial Arts movies, the sort set in a fantasy-historical period. The boxes are in Chinese.

"You want me to translate the boxes?"

Cam grins at her. "Well, that'd be great, but, thing is, my Chinese is a little rusty, and they're gonna be talkin' kinda fast."

"Um... you learned Chinese to watch Kung Fu movies?" she asks. She wouldn't actually put it past him. Some of the engineers down on 19 learned Japanese in order to watch _cartoons_.

"No, no. The Defense Language Institute taught me Mandarin," he says. "But it comes in really handy for this. They're fun."

"I used to watch them," she says.

"Wouldn't peg you as a fan," he says.

"Not really. But when you can't find live speakers of a language, you take what you can get. Foreign films, mostly. I didn't watch them, though. I listened." She hadn't watched many of these—not enough dialogue to be worth her time.

"Missed the best part, then," Cam says.

They put the first disk in. _Revenge of the Seven Ghost Dragon Monks._ It's subtitled, but the subtitles don't cover most of the dialogue and are incredibly inaccurate besides. Sometimes unintelligible in English. She translates only when Cam indicates he's missed something. Both of them make fun of the subtitles.

"Teal'c would like this," she says. It's a very Jaffa plot. Honor and revenge. "I'd have to translate the whole thing, but he'd love it."

"Think so?" Cam says. "Oh—whoa, whoa, they're gonna get down now!"

It's a highly-improbable fight scene, unless the gravity in Ancient China has suddenly dropped to far below normal. But there's no dialogue, so she feels free to ask a question.

"Why did they teach you Chinese?"

"Language requirement," Cam says. "You got to choose. I thought it would be fun."

"Um... wouldn't Russian have been more useful?"

"'92. We were pretty much on the same side."

"So the idea was to learn an _enemy_ language?"

"Yeah, sort of. Actually, to learn one that'd be 'tactically useful,' is how it goes. But not _too_ useful, or you end up stuck out back of beyond behind a desk fetching coffee for some General."

"Which is why you skipped Farsi, I'm guessing."

"Yeah." Cam goes quiet for a moment. "I know just about enough to tell whether somebody's surrenderin' or not."

"Sorry," she says.

"A while back."

The fight on-screen ends, and they go back to the dialogue.

After the movie ends—the plot doesn't make a lot of sense, but, Dani knows just enough about this genre to know the films are as stylized as Chinese Opera, and highly-symbolic, and the Far East isn't her field—Cam announces it's time for dinner.

"You lured me here to feed me," she accuses. Not really upset.

"And what would you be eating if I hadn't?" he asks.

She considers the contents of her kitchen. "Probably a peanut butter sandwich," she admits. "But I don't see what's wrong with that, since I had dinner here last night. And breakfast, too."

"And ice cream for lunch," Cam says, shaking his head. "So no reason not to do better than peanut butter. Don't worry. Won't be anything fancy."

Cam's idea of "nothing fancy" is hamburgers. Bacon cheeseburgers, actually. But he _makes his own French fries_. She watches in fascination as he peels potatoes, cuts them into strips, and drops them into boiling oil.

"Baby, where'd you think French fries came from?" he asks.

"McDonald's," she says instantly. Well, okay, not really. But out of a _box_. She thought you needed big machines to make them.

Cam snorts softly, amused.

"You know," she says, over dinner (and oh, god, the fries are _really good_ ), "if you spent more time speaking Mandarin, you'd probably get back your fluency. And increase it."

"Going to give me language lessons?" Cam asks lightly.

"No," she says. "I'm not really good at that. But I could _talk_ to you. And you could talk back. In, um, Chinese, of course."

_" <So we should just talk?>"_ Cam asks slowly.

_" <About anything you like,>"_ she answers. _" <If you don't know a word, ask me.>"_

_" <What if you don't like what I want to talk about?>"_ he asks.

_" <Then I'll hit you,>"_ she answers promptly. _" <Either here, or the next time we face each other with practice sticks.>"_

"Oooh! How do you say "busted," in Chinese?" Cam asks, laughing.

_" <Sometimes words, especially informal usages, do not have exact translations. You do your best to render the sense of the term. That is the basis of good translation.>"_ she answers.

They watch another movie. Cam makes strawberry shortcake (although it's actually strawberries over biscuits, which he says is more traditional). She works on his pronunciation.

"You should come to _Freaks and Geeks_ some time," she says, finally switching to English. "I haven't been for a while, but still."

"The AA&T party?" he asks, surprised. And _she_ shouldn't be surprised he knows about it. Cam knows just about everything that goes on around the Base.

"Not just AA&T. Some of 19 goes. All you have to do is not speak English. And you can do that."

"Maybe after you tutor me for a while."

After the second movie, she says she'd better go. He tells her to call him when she gets home. She's not quite sure why she agrees, but she does.

When she gets there and calls, he tells her he just wanted to be sure she made it home okay. She rolls her eyes heavenward. "I'm _fine_ , Cam," she says into the phone.

She hears him chuckle. "Sure you are. Sleep tight, baby," he says.

"You, too," she answers.

That night she does.

#

She spends all day Sunday and every free moment she can scrape out of her schedule during the next few days working on her paper on Ancient. She's desperate to get it done before _Odyssey_ leaves for Atlantis again—that's two months from now (assuming the IOA wins its turf-war with the Pentagon; _Odyssey_ is actually there right now, since everybody agreed they wanted a close-up look at Atlantis, and the report the Atlantis Mission sent by databurst mentioned some supply shortages)—but it will take her that long to fill in every gap, since she won't be there to answer questions. The lead linguist on the Mission is Dr. Jablonsky, and unfortunately, the Pegasus Mission doesn't have the best and the brightest on its roster, just the best and the brightest of those who were willing to go. Or who could be blackmailed into going. Like Merry McKay, who unwisely signed an employment contract with the Air Force without reading all the fine print, and who then pissed off people from the Pentagon to the SGC to the NID to half the Kremlin. Dani wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a price on the woman's head by the time she left. (It would explain how they got her to walk through the Event Horizon without _sedating_ her—although frankly, in Dani's somewhat jaundiced opinion, once Merry'd gotten a good look at John Sheppard, she'd probably have walked through into a _black hole_ if she'd known Sheppard was going too.)

At least Merry's brilliant. No argument there. But unfortunately there weren't any equivalently-brilliant blackmailable linguists available. No wonder Atlantis hasn't gotten any farther than it has at translating Ancient. That means Dani has to put as much background into her paper as she possibly can, and write down every possible question she can think of for Jablonsky and his team to ask the Atlantis AI, because she can't trust Jablonsky to think of the obvious ones and ask them himself.

She'd desperately like to be excused from Wednesday's mission in order to keep working, but learning to read Ancient isn't an SGC priority. It may be an Atlantis priority, but Atlantis is a civilian mission (under direct IOA control), and the SGC is a US Air Force operation. The SGC supports Atlantis, by way of Space Command, but there's an escalating fight over allocation of resources between the Stargate Program and the Atlantis Mission. Once again, pure research is caught in the middle of a turf-war, and suffers.

P2X-841 is one of the Abydos Cartouche worlds, meaning (obviously), it possesses a Stargate. SG-4 was supposed to survey it last December, but the Dialing Computer couldn't get a lock, and they theorized it was yet another world from which the Stargate had mysteriously vanished. Sammy's set up a dialing program to re-try all the worlds they find like that (ten so far, including Worral's), just ... because.

Last week, the Stargate on P2X-841 came back.

They sent a MALP. It's been undisturbed for days. It also hasn't been able to find any indication of who took the Stargate (although Anubis is now everybody's first guess) or why they brought it back. So SG-1 is going to go take a look.

Carefully.

#

"Well, this is going to be fun. Don't you think this is going to be fun?" Cam asks.

They're standing at the foot of the ramp, waiting to go through.

"I think it will be _quiet,_ " Sammy says hopefully. "Then we put Cassie on a plane tomorrow--"

"And this weekend we have a big party for Cam," Dani says. July 3rd. A year.

"And then we go watch _fireworks_ ," Cam says, just as the seventh chevron locks.

"Hard to beat these," Sammy says, and Cam laughs. Even Teal'c looks amused. It took him a long time to figure out the point of fireworks, but from Day One he had no trouble with the concept of Fourth of July. A day celebrating the gaining of freedom. Yeah, Teal'c can understand that.

They walk up the ramp and step through.

#

They do a perimeter sweep, then Sammy goes back to take readings off the Gate and the DHD. Nothing there out of the ordinary. Trees surround the Gate on all sides—it's in the middle of a small clearing. Mildly unusual (usually it's a _big_ clearing), but not alarmingly so.

"Okay," Cam says. "Let's move out."

They head into the trees. Straight ahead for half an hour or so, then—depending on what they see—circle back to the Gate, then do it again going the other way. It should take them most of the day to search the immediate area.

It's dim under the forest canopy. She walks between Sammy and Teal'c. The 'rocking chair' position. The safest place in a column. She pokes at the ground with her walking stick idly as they go. Ferns, fallen leaves, mushrooms. Typical northern rainforest ecosystem. It's odd. This planet seems completely uninhabited. Why take the Stargate? Why put it back?

"I will _never_ get used to the fact all of these places look just like Earth," Cam says after a few minutes.

"They don't, really," Sammy says. "It's just a superficial similarity; when the _Goa'uld_ transplanted humans to other planets, they often brought along Terran plants and animals as well, knowingly or unknowingly. If you examine the native life-forms closely enough, you'd probably find there are crucial differences between them and the ones you'd see on Earth."

"You sure about that, Sam?" Cam asks, raising his gun. "'Cause damned if I see much difference between this and what you'd get out of the _Fredrick's of Hollywood_ back home."

Dani was looking off to the side, out at the trees. Now she looks around Sammy and sees where Cam is looking.

"Vala!" 

"Darling! You remember me! How thrilling!"

Dani doesn't know what "Fredrick's of Hollywood" is, but Vala's costume makes anything Anise ever wore look tame. She's all in black leather— _tight_ black leather—with a sort of corselet top her breasts are practically _falling out of_ , trousers tighter than the pair Dani wore to escape from Worrel, boots with heels so high Dani can't imagine how she can walk in them—especially over forest muck—and some sort of wide spiked collar. There's a little cape, too.

"Hold it right there," Cam says.

Vala stops, striking a pose. "But I can't talk to you from all the way over here," she says, pouting.

"Oh, I can hear you just fine," Cam says.

"I'm perfectly harmless," Vala says, sounding hurt.

"Mostly," Cam says. " _Mostly_ harmless."

Dani doesn't think Vala's mostly harmless at all. She walks up to stand beside Cam. "Whatever you want, the answer's no," she says.

"You don't even know what I want yet," Vala says. And oh, god, why does the woman insist on sounding so _reasonable_?

"All right," Cam says. "What _do_ you want?"

"Cam!" Dani says.

"Now, now," he says. "Doesn't do any harm to listen. After all, it's not like we've got a ship she can steal this time."

"Oh, that was all just a misunderstanding," Vala says hastily. "Besides, you got it back." She takes a few more steps forward.

"I _will_ shoot you," Cam says, raising his P90 again. "And this is not a zat."

"All right then!" Vala says, sounding irritated. "I've come to make you a proposition."

Behind Dani, Sammy clears her throat.

"What kind of a proposition?" Cam asks agreeably. 

"A business proposition. Why? What did you think? Although I admit that, under the right circumstances, I'm perfectly open to--"

Cam shakes his head and she stops talking. "I'm afraid you've got the wrong idea. We're not for hire."

"I don't want to hire you. I want to _rent_ you. Just for a few hours. And really, not all of you. Just her." Vala points. At _her._ "You'd hardly miss her. Really. I promise, I'd have her right back here ever so quickly, and there'd be quite a lot in it for you."

_"No!"_ Dani says vehemently.

"You want to _rent_ Dr. Jackson?" Cam says slowly. "Why?"

"Well why should I tell you?" Vala says. "It doesn't look like I'm going to get her, now, does it?"

"You haven't been very persuasive so far," Cam says.

"Personally, I'd think you'd jump at the chance to get rid of her, but that's just me." Vala shrugs elaborately. "All right. If you _must_ know. I ... happen to know where there's an ... item of value. _Which_ your Dr. Jackson can help me acquire. Now, it's worth a great deal to the right people. And to _prove_ how generous I am, you can have _all_ the rest of the treasure stored with it. _Nearly_ as valuable, and _much_ easier to sell!" She smiles brightly.

"Sorry," Cam says. "We aren't treasure hunters."

"Oh, that's not what _I_ hear," Vala says. She shrugs, clasping her hands behind her and rocking back and forth. "Would it help if I told you that if this item fell into the wrong hands it would be a very bad thing?"

"It might," Cam says. "If I thought for one instant your hands were the right ones."

"Oh, but that's the thing!" Vala says eagerly. "I have every intention of making sure he doesn't get his hands on it!"

"'He' who?" Cam asks.

"Oh, now, you can't ask a girl to reveal all her secrets, can you, _Cam?_ Especially since you're being so _very_ uncooperative? Here I come and ask you for one little favor--"

"How did you know we'd be here?" Dani asks.

"Darling, you sent that silly metal box through the Stargate ever so long ago. If you hadn't come, I would have told whoever did to go and fetch you!"

"You tracked the MALP's energy emissions," Sammy says.

"Is that what it's called? What a _stupid_ name," Vala says in delight.

"Okay, that's it," Cam says. "You're coming back to the SGC with us, and you're going to tell us everything you know, and then, maybe--"

"Oh, that sounds so _dull!_ " Vala says. "Here! _Catch_!"

One hand comes out from behind her back. She makes a tossing motion. Dani sees a flash of silver.

"Grenade!" Cam shouts, and they scatter and throw themselves to the ground.

It doesn't do any good.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bryce Ferguson still dies. Sorry. And...mention of PTSD? Kind of. Also mention of suicide, and Dani attempts to make another bar pick-up and doesn't.


	6. JULY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani comes full circle. Anubis is still mysterious. Lord Yu has many titles. Dani and Cam go to Kelowna. Unfortunately, so does Anubis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter-specific warnings.

When she wakes up—hey, _alive_ —she has a splitting headache and she's blind. From the symptoms, it was probably a _Goa'uld_ shock grenade Vala threw. She's been hit by one before. You wake up blind, but the blindness fades fairly quickly.

"Cam? Sammy? Teal'c?" No answer. 

She feels around. Metal. She's been moved. Her glasses are gone, but she carries a spare pair in her tac-vest and she's still wearing it. No point in putting them on yet, though. For some reason, she's wearing a wide bracelet around her right wrist. (That's new. Tracking device?) She turns it around and around, but she can't find the clasp, and it's too tight to pull off over her hand.

Her pack is gone, too. Also her gun and her knife. Still got her radio and her GDO, though. She tries her radio. Probably useless, but worth a shot.

"Sierra Gulf One Niner, this is Sierra Gulf One Delta Juliet, please respond."

No answer.

On hands and knees she follows the wall, making a circuit of the space she's in. It's not all that big. She's alone here. By the time she's done that, her vision is starting to return. Lights and shadows. Gold and black. Her heart sinks, and she pulls herself to her feet, running her hands over the walls and feeling the familiar hieroglyphs. She's on a _Goa'uld_ spaceship. A _tel'tak_ , she thinks. Cargo hold.

A few minutes later the door to the cargo hold opens. It's Vala.

"Danielle! You're awake. How lovely! I've been waiting for hours."

"Where are my friends?" she asks, backing up. She fumbles in her vest for her spare glasses, opens the case, puts them on. Glances at her watch. It's been eight hours.

Vala looks as if she's thinking very hard; Dani knows it's an act. "Well, by now I'd say they've probably left that dreary little planet I found you all on and gone home. And _you_ can go home, too. Just as soon as you've done me one little favor."

"Not a chance."

"Or I can sell you to the highest bidder. I've been asking around. You're worth quite a bit of money, you know."

"Or I could hit you over the head and escape."

"Oh, I don't think so." Vala looks pleased, and waves her wrist. She's wearing a gold bracelet identical to the one Dani has on. "Have you ever heard of _kor mak_?"

"No," Dani says, and Vala looks disappointed.

"Well, they're _Goa'uld_ prisoner transport bracelets. If they're separated for long enough, you'll die. There's no way to remove them, except with the key."

Dani looks down at her wrist. Okay, now that she can see well enough to get a good look at it, it _does_ look like _Goa'uld_ technology. No way to remove it? _Goa'uld_ artifacts tend to be on the indestructible side; the ribbon weapons and the healing devices they've gotten their hands on over the years are made of a metal the scientists at Area 51 have christened _orichalcum_ , and they've never been able to make a dent in it no matter what they've used. "I don't believe you," she says slowly.

"You lie _very_ badly, you know," Vala says confidentially. "Really. One little artifact _nobody's_ going to miss, then I'll take these off and be on my way."

"And you'll sell it to whoever's looking for it in the first place," Dani says.

"Small chance of that!" Vala scoffs airily. "Look, I'd love to stand around having a long and _completely pointless_ discussion with you, but we're a _little_ short of time." She strides over to Dani and grabs her arm. "First things first," Vala says. She pulls out another shock grenade and rolls it across the floor. When it reaches the middle, the transport rings come up and vanish with it. "I've heard they guard the Gate Room where we're going," she explains. "And I just hate surprises."

"Where are you _taking me_?" Dani sputters, as Vala drags her into the rings.

"No time!" Vala says cheerfully. The transport rings rise up around them and take them away. When they collapse into the floor again, she knows where she is.

Abydos.

The Gate Room guards lie sprawled on the floor around the grenade. One of them is Skaara.

"Skaara!" She runs over to him, kneels down, lifts him into her lap.

He'd been host to Klorel before the _Tok'ra_ freed him. He would have known what the grenade was, but the others wouldn't. He hadn't been able to reach it in time to save them.

"They aren't hurt," Vala says, sounding miffed. "They'll just be asleep for a while."

Dani smoothes back his hair. "He's my brother." She lays him gently back down on the stones. "He has a wife. Her name is Neshaat. They're expecting a child."

"Very touching," Vala says.

"He was host to the _Goa'uld_ Klorel," Dani adds, and sees Vala's eyes flicker. "I saw him taken by Apophis's Serpent Guards from this very room. I searched for him for years. When we finally got him back, I brought him home. His father embraced him and wept with joy."

"I didn't hurt him!" Vala repeats more strongly.

"And you aren't getting any help out of me to loot Abydos," Dani says flatly. She sits down on the steps of the Stargate.

"Look, darling, you need to be reasonable about this," Vala says, and she actually sounds as if she's starting to lose her patience, and oh, isn't _that_ a tone Dani's gotten familiar with over the years?

"I really don't see why. You lied to me—"

"Not yet!" Vala protests.

"—knocked me out— _and_ my friends—kidnapped me, and used a _Goa'uld_ grenade on my family. Why should I be reasonable?"

"Because you don't want the _Goa'uld_ coming back here," Vala says through gritted teeth.

Dani gets to her feet. "They wouldn't," she says slowly. "Abydos is an Asgard Protected World. We got it included in the Treaty."

"Yes, well, that's perfectly _lovely_ of the Asgard, but not everybody _cares_ about the _Goa'uld_ /Asgard Treaty, Danielle."

She can only think of one _Goa'uld_ who doesn't. And she'd love to worry about what having Anubis back and apparently up to his old tricks means, but she actually has more pressing problems at the moment. "What's on Abydos that Anubis wants?"

Vala sighs. "A power crystal. There are six of them, called Eyes. They were once held by various System Lords: Apophis, Osiris, Tiamat, Hecate, Sokar, and Ra. Each is powerful. Together, they're, well, a lot more powerful. Anubis has five of the Eyes. The only one he's missing is the Eye of Ra. Together they'll make the most powerful weapon in the galaxy."

"And you think it's here."

"So does Anubis. He's looked everywhere else."

"And you'd know this how?"

"I have my sources."

"And you're not going to just sell it to him the moment you get your hands on it," Dani says in disbelief.

Vala regards her incredulously. "I don't know what universe _you've_ been living in, Danielle, but in mine, people do not _sell_ things to Anubis. They give him whatever he wants and hope he lets them live. And they're usually disappointed."

"You've got that right," Dani mutters. "So your idea is I give you the final component Anubis needs to build some ultimate superweapon and hope you don't give it to him?"

Vala smiles engagingly. "It really wouldn't be in my best interests. So you see—"

Suddenly the pyramid shakes. Dust filters down from the stones in the ceiling above. A _ha'tak_ is docking.

"He got here early!" Vala yelps, sounding as if it's a personal affront.

"Come on!" Dani says. "We've to get the guards out of sight!" Before Jaffa come through the Stargate.

"But—" Vala says.

"Do it and I'll help you find the Eye of Ra!"

Between them, she and Vala hastily drag the six Gate Room guards and their weapons into a small side-room and cover them with blankets. It isn't much, but it's the best they can do.

"We need to dial back to Earth and get reinforcements," she tells Vala as they work. "When I tell General Landry what's at stake, I'm sure he'll authorize it." (Without a debate she doesn't have time for. That'd be nice.)

"But my ship—" Vala says. Dani isn't sure whether Vala still intends to try for the Eye of Ra, or simply flee immediately.

"If that's Anubis out there, it doesn't matter how good your ship's cloak is. He can see right through it."

Vala's still hesitating, but it doesn't matter. By the time they get back out into the Gate Room, the Stargate's already starting to spin. Vala looks on the edge of panic.

Dani grabs her by the hand and they run.

She spent a year living on Abydos. Three hundred eighty-five days; an Abydan year. Much of that time was spent exploring the pyramid complex: the first Abydos Mission only saw the Gate Room and the outer chamber, but later Dani had discovered a vast network of passages and small chambers dug down into the desert rock. Their purpose has always baffled her: alien space-gods wouldn't want them, and the Abydans didn't use them when Ra ruled here. Nevertheless, here they are.

They make an excellent place to hide.

"Do you have a _plan_?" Vala demands, when they stop running. They've ducked into a small chamber whose walls are painted all over with blue lotuses. It's one of Dani's favorite places in the catacombs. The room itself is shadowy, but the corridors are lit with baskets of burning reeds. It's enough light to see by if you know the passageways.

"You know, if you'd just told us all this back on P2X-841—" Dani says.

"That stupid little planet? I suppose you'd have been all in favor of coming along and helping me out?"

"We'd have been in favor of keeping the Eye of Ra out of Anubis' hands, you stupid bitch," Dani snaps.

"And where would the profit be to me in that?" Vala demands.

"Where is it _now_?" She keeps her voice down with an effort. If there aren't Jaffa on the surface, there will be soon, and sound carries. "You can't get to your ship, you couldn't use it if you could, and—oh yeah—we're cut off from the Stargate."

"I could still trade you to Anubis in exchange for free passage off this rock," Vala says crossly.

"Good luck with that," Dani says absently. Vala makes an exasperated hissing noise.

She goes to the doorway of the chamber—no damned doors down here unfortunately—and looks out, listening carefully. All quiet. So far. If Vala _does_ sell her, Anubis will torture her for information and probably make her a host in order to be sure he has everything. But everything _really_ sensitive that she knows—pass-codes and access-codes—will have been changed the moment Cam told General Landry she was missing, and their offworld bases have been placed on alert. She doesn't know where the _Tok'ra_ are, or who and where most of the leaders of the Jaffa Resistance are (and if nobody else thinks to warn the Jaffa, she knows Teal'c will). The damage she can do to Earth is limited. And if—once infested—her _Goa'uld_ tries to take her to infiltrate the SGC or any of its offworld holdings, they'll either take it prisoner or kill them both.

She'd really rather skip the whole thing, though.

"You said you'd—" Vala begins.

_"Shut up,"_ Dani says, still listening. Still nothing. She steps out of the Blue Lotus Chamber and heads down the corridor at a trot.

Vala follows.

#

"I always thought there might be a secret chamber here," Dani says. "Never had the time or the equipment to find out, though. The hieroglyphs say the rays of the sun will reveal all."

They're standing in front of a frescoed wall. It talks about how Ra draws his power from the sun—odd in itself, considering what she now knows of the _Goa'uld_. The other odd thing about the wall is that there's a red jewel set into the middle of the "eye" design. It didn't look in the least Egyptian the first time she saw it, and it looks even less so now.

"A safe offer, considering there isn't any sun down here," Vala says. She pokes the jewel experimentally with a finger. "Do you suppose any light would do?"

"I have no idea," Dani says. "If I had my flashlight, I could try that. Too bad I don't."

She blinks. Vala is tucking the zat onto her belt and fitting a ribbon weapon onto her hand. Where the hell is the woman _keeping_ all of this stuff? That leather fits tighter than her _skin_. 

"Let's try this," Vala says.

"Blowing a hole in the wall isn't the best—"

But Vala simply points her hand at the jewel in the wall. Dani hears the familiar wavering whine of the ribbon device. Even though it's not pointed at her, the sound still sets her teeth on edge. The beam of light strikes the red jewel dead center. Nothing explodes. But the wall begins to rise up with a rumble.

"Oh, god," Dani groans. "If they didn't hear the ribbon device, they probably heard _that_."

Vala ducks under the rising wall and Dani follows. There's a secret room behind the wall. It's pitch dark, but Vala lights the torches left behind with her hand-device. The room is filled with treasure.

"Where is it?" Vala mutters. "I don't see it." She's digging through chests and baskets, raising clouds of dust. The walls are heaped with storage containers, most of them moldering away. Dani sneezes violently.

"It would help if you told me what we're looking for," she says. It looks as if this is one of the places Ra stored his offerings, but they can't be offerings he got _here_. The Abydans have always paid tribute in _naquaadah_ , not in gold and jewels.

"It's a large red disk with the symbol of Ra on it," Vala says impatiently. "It's set in a golden frame, so it can be worn."

Dani moves to the center table. More gold and jewels.

And something else. A black basalt tablet, carved with row after row of Ancient hieroglyphs.

The same style they found in Pegasus. She picks it up, puzzling through it slowly. Something about a plague. There's the symbol-group she's assigned the value "The Ancients" to. And here's one that means "Ascended.'

_"There was (is) a plague, and we, the Ancients, Ascended (do Ascend)."_

The Ancients and the Ascended are the same race.

"What are you _doing_?" Vala demands. "We don't have time for this now! We have to find the eye of Ra!"

She tries to snatch the tablet out of Dani's hands. Dani ducks away from her and sets it carefully back on the table. "Vala, this is at least as important!"

"Not. If. We're. Dead," Vala says, spacing the words out carefully.

"All right. It _has_ to be here, because I lived here for a year and searched these ruins pretty thoroughly, and there aren't any other treasure rooms. So ... maybe there's a secret compartment."

"Oh, yes! Because _I_ put secret compartments in all _my_ secret chambers!"

"You would if you wanted to hide something really valuable," Dani says. She picks up the nearest suitable object—a golden scepter with a rock-crystal knob on the end—and begins sounding the walls.

One of them is hollow.

"Okay," she says. "I don't see a trigger mechanism like the outer door had, but there's got to be some way to—"

She throws herself out of the way just in time as Vala raises her hand. There's a beam of light and the wall explodes.

"Okay, they _definitely_ heard that," Dani mutters.

But she's closer to the wall than Vala is, and dives in first. For a moment she thinks it's another dead end, then her hand closes on something hard. She yanks it out.

Red. Udjat. Bingo. She hauls open the neck of her t-shirt and drops the object inside.

"Give me that!" Vala demands. "It's mine!"

"The hell it is," Dani says. "But we can argue about it later. Now give me the zat."

"You can't possibly think I'm stupid enough to do that, Danielle."

"Vala, much as I'd love to, I'm not going to shoot you with it. But you've got the ribbon weapon and I don't have anything. And I'm pretty sure we're going to have to fight our way back to the Gate Room."

"So you've got a plan now?" Vala asks dubiously.

"We go back to P2X-841 if we can get through the Stargate. Contact my people from there and arrange for transport home."

"What about my money?"

"Vala, whatever you were going to sell this for, we'll double it."

General Landry is going to kill her.

"A tempting offer."

"Give me the fucking zat."

Vala sighs and shrugs. Dani snatches the zat off her belt. It's a relief to have a weapon in her hands again, and for a moment she considers going back on her promise and shooting the damned woman. But she's not leaving anyone in _Goa'uld_ hands if she can avoid it. They step out into the passageway again. Vala zaps the wall once they're outside, and it lowers again. Maybe that will buy them a little time.

There are at least a dozen ways back to the Gate Room through the catacombs. Over the next hour, they take most of them at different times, evading some Jaffa search parties, taking others down. They add a couple additional zats and a staff weapon to their arsenal. And they finally reach the Gate Room.

The Gate is active. And guarded. Six Jaffa and a First Prime. "Oh, crap, that's Herak," Dani mutters.

"Do you know him?" Vala asks. They're crouched behind a pillar at the far end of the Gate Room.

"We met once. I don't think he liked me very much."

As she watches, six more Jaffa appear, dragging the unconscious bodies of the Gate Room guards. They drop them carelessly at Herak's feet; Dani hears the impact of skull against stone and winces. One of the Jaffa offers Herak a small silver sphere: the expended _Goa'uld_ shock grenade.

"We're officially screwed," she mutters. Herak will know perfectly well _he_ didn't knock out the Abydan guards. So someone else has to be here.

"We have to make a deal," Vala whispers desperately. "Give them what they want so they'll leave."

The Jaffa are trying to rouse the Abydans to question them now, but it isn't working.

"Didn't you tell me nobody makes successful deals with Anubis?" Dani whispers back. "And we _can't_ let him have this! You _also_ told me the six Eyes together would make the most powerful weapon in the galaxy! Anubis is the last person in the universe who should have something like that!" Because he attacked Earth before. If he has what he thinks is an invincible weapon, he'll almost certainly do it again. And they don't have the Antarctic defenses any more.

"I lied," Vala says instantly.

"No," Dani says. "You didn't." She's sure of that.

Vala grabs for her t-shirt, trying to get at the Eye of Ra.

Dani zats her.

"What was that?" Herak shouts. Say what you will about a zat, it isn't a stealth weapon.

"Me," Dani calls, sticking her head out around a pillar.

There's a brief and entirely-inconclusive exchange of staff-weapon blasts. They can't hit her behind the pillars, and she's aiming high to avoid hitting their hostages. After a few seconds, Herak orders his Jaffa to cease fire.

"Surrender at once!" he says.

Oh, god, she wishes Cam were here. She's not sure she can pull this off. "I have the Eye of Ra!" she calls back. "Leave Abydos at once, or I'll destroy it!"

Herak holds out his hand, and one of the Jaffa places a staff-weapon into it. "I have hostages. I will execute them if you do not surrender the Eye of Ra immediately."

Oh, god. _Skaara._

"And when they're all dead and you still don't have the Eye, what are you going to do?"

Herak hesitates. She thought he might. For a Jaffa, he dithers a bit, and if you can get him to lose his temper, he's prone to really stupid mistakes.

"Yeah, Anubis is really going to love that, Herak! I mean, you lost us once when you were supposed to hand us over to him! This time the others didn't even bother to come! They figured I could handle you by myself!"

"Who are you?" Herak demands suspiciously.

"And you're the guy who was bragging he was going to be remembered for taking down SG-1!"

Herak whips the staff-weapon he's holding up and fires down the gallery at her. Misses, of course, but the display of petulance is heartening. "Give me the Eye!" he roars.

"Attack me and I destroy it!"

Herak stomps off. Out of her sight. Probably going off to get orders from his boss. They've got a breathing space.

She glances over at Vala. Still out. One small blessing. Because she's realized she's just _painted herself into a corner._ If she offers to trade the Eye for safe passage for the two of them offworld, she might actually get it. But then Anubis gets a superweapon, and he's already too powerful as it is—he makes the other _Goa'uld_ look like little rays of sunshine. Even Osiris was terrified of him, from what Simon says.

If she refuses, he has an entire planet full of hostages, and he'll start shooting them.

After a few minutes, Herak comes back.

"You are Danielle Jackson of SG-1," he says. "I have spoken with my master. He has said if you do not give me the Eye of Ra immediately, the village of Nagada will be destroyed."

Nagada. Her home. The only family she can still claim. Kasuf. Skaara's wife Neshaat. Sha're's tomb is there.

Millions—billions—of others will die if she gives Anubis the Eye.

"And if I give it to him?" At least she can play for time.

"He promises you safe conduct through the Stargate. And to leave Abydos untouched."

She shakes her head. She can't. She can't. _Cam, Jack, what am I going to do?_

Something hits her in the back of the head with stunning force.

#

There are degrees of unconsciousness. She's been rendered unconscious enough different times in the past decade to have made a study of it. On this occasion, she's been unconscious enough to be oblivious to her surroundings but still aware enough to have some sense of the passage of time. She hasn't been unconscious long.

Grass under her face.

She rolls onto her back.

The shock-grenade headache had receded a bit, but it's back full-force now. She touches her forehead. It's bloody. She has a faint memory-or-guess of hitting the pillar with it. The back of her head hurts, too.

Glasses gone again.

Gold bracelet gone too. It was on her right wrist, and she's right-handed. It was a constant annoyance.

She opens her eyes cautiously. The light is dim. Twilight on P2X-841. The clearing in front of the Stargate.

She gets to her feet. The world revolves crazily around her and for a moment she thinks she might throw up. She clutches at the DHD for support.

Vala is sitting on the steps of the Stargate. "I'm sorry," she says, when she sees Dani see her.

"For what? Vala, _what did you do_?"

But she knows what Vala did. Vala traded the Eye of Ra for her life. The amazing thing is that she included Dani in the deal.

"I'm sorry," Vala says again. She gets to her feet and walks over to the DHD. She begins to dial. Dani tries to grapple with her, to stop her. Vala simply throws her off. Dani falls backward. Her head hits the ground with a thump and the pain is so bad it makes her stop breathing for a second.

The Gate engages. Vala steps away from the DHD. "He's going to Kelowna," she says. "There's something called _naquadriaah_ there. If you're as good as some people think you are, you can stop him there."

"Why are you telling me this?" Dani demands, struggling to her knees. Even on such short acquaintance, she knows Vala doesn't give something for nothing.

"I'm sorry," Vala says a third time. She turns and runs up the steps to the Stargate, through the Event Horizon.

Dani hurries to the DHD, but she isn't fast enough to see what address Vala dialed.

She clings to the edge of the DHD, and slowly, carefully, dials the address for Earth. It's almost too dark to see by now. And she's managed to lose two pairs of glasses in the last twelve hours. That's a new personal best.

At least she's still got her radio.

"This is Danielle Jackson calling Stargate Command. Danielle Jackson calling Stargate Command—"

"This is General Hank Landry of Stargate Command." Oh, like she doesn't know who he is after three years. On the other hand, he's not quite sure she's _her,_ is he? 

"Yes, General. This is Dr. Jackson." Not that he's likely to believe that.

"We haven't received your IDC, Dr. Jackson."

"Um ... it's dark here, and I don't have my glasses. Ah, I'm on P2X-841. I'll try to send it now. Could you ask Walter to send a radio signal to keep the Gate open please?"

"Very well. Your team's been worried about you. Where were you?"

Great. He wants to talk, she's trying to get her GDO unstrapped from her leg and her radio isn't configured hands free.

"Abydos, sir. Look, you need to dial in there as soon as you can. Anubis has landed troops in force, and the Abydans may need our help."

"Why would Anubis go to Abydos?"

"He was looking for the same thing Vala was—a _Goa'uld_ artifact called the Eye of Ra."

"Does he have it now?"

She winces. "Probably. So you need to find out what's going on on Abydos." She pulls the GDO free and drops it. "Damn."

"Dr. Jackson?"

"Did I mention it's _dark_ on 841 right now, sir?" she says irritably. The Event Horizon gives some light, but not really enough. She feels around in the grass until she finds the GDO. "Okay. Got it. Sending now. I'm, ah, going to need both hands for this." She tucks the radio carefully into a pocket, and punches in her IDC. The numbers in the display are large enough for her to read them without her glasses—and it's the right code—but the GDO doesn't go from red to green. She pulls out her radio again.

"General? Is there a problem?" As if she doesn't know there is, considering she's been in enemy hands and has just admitted she's been off on Abydos with Anubis.

"Just stay where you are, Dr. Jackson. We'll be sending a team through to retrieve you shortly. Landry out."

_"Wait!"_ Abydos is a higher priority than picking her up. But the link has already gone dead. She keys off her radio and the wormhole collapses. In the absence of its light, the night is darker still. "Yeah. Did I mention it's _dark_ here?"

Dialling back won't get her anywhere. She leans against the DHD and waits. About half an hour later the Stargate engages, but the only thing to come through is a MALP rigged for night running. She walks up in front of it, squinting into the bright white lights. The Gate is active behind it, so the radio link should be live.

"Did you get through to Abydos?" she asks.

"Dani?" It's Cam.

"Cam!" She feels an insane and unreasonable sense of relief, a conviction that _somehow he will fix this._ "Are the others there?"

"Yeah," Cam says. "The gang's all here. You look a little banged up."

"I think I hit my head against something. I'm not sure."

There's a pause. "Yeah. Okay. You want to take off your vest?"

She takes off her tac-vest and drops it to the grass. "Anything else?"

"Ah ... shirt." Cam sounds a little embarrassed.

She unbuttons her BDU shirt and drops it to the ground. "More?"

"No," Cam says. "You're on monitor here. You need to turn around now."

She does, staggering slightly. "Cam, I'm not armed," she says when she's facing the MALP again. "I'm not a _Goa'uld_ , either—but Sammy can tell you that in just a few seconds. Did you dial Abydos? Please! Herak was holding Skaara hostage in the Gate Room!"

"Hold on," Cam says. "We'll be there in just a few minutes."

She backs up to the DHD—she knows the proper procedure for dealing with a suspected host perfectly well—and less than five minutes later they walk through. All in night goggles. The MALP shuts down its lights as they emerge, and the Stargate disengages, leaving her blind in the darkness.

She hears footsteps and the rustle of grass. She doesn't move.

"Dani? It's Sam. I'm right in front of you."

"I'm clean, right?" she asks raggedly. There's always the possibility she isn't; that everything that's happened was part of a long and elaborate charade designed to allow Anubis to implant her with a _Goa'uld_ symbiote and make her believe it wasn't even a possibility.

"You're clean." Sammy touches her cheek, orienting her. "She's clean!" she calls back to the other two, and then hugs Dani hard.

"Sammy," Dani says urgently. _"Abydos."_

"We tried," Sammy says quietly. "We couldn't get a lock."

"But—" ( _"I'm sorry,"_ she hears Vala say, in memory. Did Vala know? _What_ did she know? If she gave Anubis the Eye, there was no reason for him to do anything but leave.) "You have to try again!"

"We will," Sammy promises. "Right now we have to get you home."

Sammy moves away from her, around to the front of the DHD, and dials. In a moment, the wormhole is established, and in the light of the Event Horizon Dani can see Cam and Teal'c standing on either side of the Stargate. Sammy sends her IDC—Dani turns her head away to avoid even the possibility of seeing it; they aren't supposed to know each others', because what you don't know, you can't tell (once, a long time ago, she'd told Jack hers, because back then you'd been allowed to pick your own and, at ten digits, they were hard to remember without a mnemonic; she'd used her home phone number and thought it was an elegant solution. He'd been furious—that she'd tell it, that he now knew it—and her IDC was changed the same day). Then Sammy comes back to her and offers her a steadying hand.

"I have to go to—" _Abydos_ "—Kelowna," Dani says, as they mount the steps. "Vala said he was going there next. She said he was after their _naquadriaah_."

"Well, you can tell us all about it once we get you back to Earth," Cam says.

She steps through into the glaring unreal brightness of the Gate Room, and for a moment it's half a day ago, they were on their way to 841, laughing and joking and talking about parties and celebrations. Now there's an Armed Response Team in the Gate Room to welcome her home, and Sammy's arm around her is close to being the only thing holding her up.

General Landry is waiting for her at the foot of the ramp. "Welcome home, Dr. Jackson," he says.

"Anubis is going to invade Kelowna," she says. "We have to warn them."

"Vala seemed to think he might be after the Kelownans' _naquadriaah,_ sir," Cam says.

Sammy unwinds Dani's grip from her arm and transfers it to Cam's. Sammy heads for the Computer Room. Dani hopes she's going to go dial Abydos again. And this time the Stargate will get a lock, and everything will be fine. Please.

"Do we have any reason to trust this woman?" Landry asks.

"She said she was sorry," Dani says. She doesn't want to believe she knows why.

"Couldn't hurt to give them a heads-up, sir," Cam says. "I'll get Dr. Jackson down to the Infirmary now."

"I need a full report as soon as possible," General Landry says.

Cam starts to lead her out. She tugs the other way. "It won't wait," she says. "The report. It won't wait."

Both of them look at her. "Come into my office," General Landry says.

#

Her head is ringing, and it feels as if she has the worst migraine _ever_. She collapses into a chair and rubs her eyes. Teal'c is standing behind her chair, a silent comforting presence. Cam goes into the Conference Room and brings her a cup of coffee.

"Dr. Jackson?" General Landry asks.

She takes a gulp of the coffee. It's bitter and overcooked, but it helps clear her head. "There are six Eyes. Power crystals. Anubis had five already. The last one, the Eye of Ra, was on Abydos. It was what Vala wanted me to find. All six together make up a kind of superweapon. More powerful than anything. He has all of them now. She said she wanted The Eye of Ra in order to keep it out of his hands. I don't know if she was telling the truth. He got to Abydos just after we did. We found where Ra had hidden it, but by then Anubis had taken the Abydos Gate Room and landed Jaffa on the planet. We were trapped—Vala and I—and ... I'd zatted her, but she recovered faster than I thought. She knocked me out and—I guess—traded the Eye to Herak for safe passage for both of us off Abydos."

"Nice of her to include you," Cam says.

"I don't know why she did. She said she'd linked the two of us with _kor mak_ —Goa'uld prisoner transport bracelets—but she could have taken it off and abandoned me, I think, because she took them off later. When I came to, I was back to 841. She'd waited there until I woke up. She told me about Kelowna. That Anubis would go after their _naquadriaah_. I couldn't stop her from leaving. She told me she was sorry. That's all."

As a report, it's not much of one, but it hits the high points.

"Report to the Infirmary," General Landry says. "We'll contact the Kelownan government."

She nods, gulping down the last of her coffee. Cam lifts her gently to her feet.

"Let's go," he says. "We'll keep trying to reach Abydos."

#

"What time is it?" she asks, as they walk. The words come out a little slurred, but she has a screaming headache and the adrenaline high of pure terror has long since worn off.

"'Round 0400," Cam says.

"Cassie's flight leaves today." At noon, actually. So Sammy has to have her to Denver International by ten. It's at least an hour's drive; Sammy needs to leave the Mountain by eight to pick up Cassie, and even that's pushing it.

Maybe the Abydans just buried their Gate again. She taught them that. Abydos is the only one of the SGC's trading partners to which the SGC gives weapons. They have enough dynamite to bring down the pyramid, and Skaara knows how to use it. If Sammy can't get a lock, they need to send a ship. Or get one of their allies to send one.

"Yeah. Sam called her and told her you were missing. She knows to drive herself if Sam's not home in time."

The three of them get into the elevator. Not fair. None of this is fair to Cassie, having to constantly take second place in Sammy's life to a thousand emergencies. If Sammy didn't do what she does—if they all didn't—Cassie would be dead twice over, but Dani knows it doesn't make up for all the absences, broken promises, excuses. Sammy can't be _there_ for Cassie because she's being there for half the galaxy.

"She should go home," Dani says reluctantly. "I'm back."

The elevator doors hiss open.

"She doesn't have to leave right now. Maybe it was a malfunction on our end. Or, you know, maybe Anubis just stole their Stargate when he left."

She feels a sudden stunning sense of relief. She hadn't thought of that. It's just the sort of thing a _Goa'uld_ would do, and they know Anubis has been stealing Stargates.

"We need somebody to go look," she says, as they walk down the corridor in the direction of the Infirmary. The Free Jaffa have ships, but not many, and they're skittish about doing the _Tau'ri_ favors. The _Tok'ra_ are usually more willing to help (usually), but they're a lot harder to contact. It's fairly easy to at least leave a message on one of the Asgard answering machines scattered around the galaxy on various Asgard Protected Worlds, but they—

—always come too late.

"Well, Sam was already trying to get through to her Dad while we were still looking for you. And if the _Tok'ra_ won't do a flyby, General Landry will ask _Odyssey_ to detour on her way back to Earth."

"That's two months from now," she protests.

"Maybe General Carter will come through," Cam says.

In the Infirmary, Cam and Teal'c hand her off to Dr. Tadeuszowska. He used to be the generalist on the swing shift, but one of the Marines on SG-11 killed the graveyard shift doctor a few weeks ago because of exposure to an alien mind control device, and all the personnel were reshuffled to put the new people into places where they could get the most help.

Taddy tells her to put on a set of scrubs. Never a good sign when they take your clothes away from you.

Basic post-op checkover, minus the prophylactic antibiotics for some reason, and he takes more blood than usual. It takes him a while to clean up her forehead to his satisfaction—the blood has long since dried—and apply antibiotic cream and a loose dressing. He tells her the bruises will probably fade in a few days.

When he shines his penlight in her eyes, she sucks in her breath sharply and closes them.

_" <What was it this time, Dani?>"_ he asks.

_" <Goa'uld shock grenade—about fourteen hours ago.>"_ She tries to reach up to touch her forehead; Taddy gently fends her off. _" <I'm guessing I hit my head on a stone pillar. And, um, maybe a ribbon weapon to the back of the head? I don't know.>"_

_" <Headache?>"_ he asks, reaching around to probe the back of her skull. He finds a particularly sore spot and she hisses.

_" <Yes,>"_ she says reluctantly.

_" <Then I apologize in advance for the MRI. But I'm not medicating you until I see what you've managed to jar loose this time.>"_

"You're not medicating me _at all_. I want to go home," she says, switching from Polish to English.

"We'll see."

#

The MRI is a horror. Magnetic Resonance Imagery, and the entire machine resounds like a blacksmith's shop while her skull and spine series is being taken. Since she has a headache already, the experience is so painful it actually makes her eyes water. After the MRI, the cranial X-Rays are almost a relief.

"Can I get dressed?" she demands when she's wheeled back into the main ward. She needs to go see if Sammy got a lock on Abydos.

"You can get into a bed and _wait_ until your labs come back and I get a chance to take a good look at your films," Taddy says implacably. "In case it's escaped your notice, you've been _hurt,_ Dani."

"Just hit in the head," she grumbles, climbing into a bed.

"And obviously the least vulnerable part of your body, considering it seems to be made of solid rock. Nurse, would you please get Dr. Jackson a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and then hold a gun on her until I say she can get out of that bed?"

"Yes, Doctor." Dorrie walks off.

"You wouldn't shoot me," Dani says, lying back and closing her eyes. "You don't have a surgeon on graveyard any more."

"Because all of our emergencies are supposed to occur during normal office hours," Taddy says in disgust. "Or if they don't, the people bleeding all over the Infirmary are supposed to wait until Dr. Warner or Dr. Collins can get here."

Dani sighs. And if they have a surgical emergency while they're in lockdown—and that's happened before, a lot of times—Taddy will just have to scrub up and do his best. Janet would never have let this happen. General Hammond would have fought it all the way to the White House. Janet is dead, and General Hammond is off in Washington now.

"Order them to stop bleeding, Taddy. That always works," she says.

"Somebody here order lousy coffee and a great doughnut?"

She opens her eyes. It's Cam. He sets the cup and the napkin down on her bedside table and raises her bed upright.

"You should go home," she says. "I'm fine."

What she really wants is for him to tell _her_ everything's fine. But how can he? She thinks of his living room and his couch with a yearning that's almost physical pain. The antithesis of here. A rowdy Friday night, the four of them. A quiet Saturday morning, the two of them.

No. _Don't want what you can't have_. She's seen that break people more thoroughly than either pain or loss. Wanting. She's a genius, a freak, a monster (depending on who you ask)—what she isn't is _normal_ , and she has no right to want normal, because she'll never have it. She's a catalyst for strange; "normal" will always be out of her reach no matter what she does. She has other things, and she has to believe they're better because they're what she gets. She reaches for the coffee. Cam puts it into her hand. She drinks, then he hands her the doughnut. Chocolate frosted. Nice. Those always go first.

"In a while," he says, which (she has learned) is one of the many ways Cam has of telling someone he's heard what they've said and still intends to do just as he damned pleases. "Still no lock on the Abydos Gate," he adds quietly.

She won't think about that right now. "Kelownans?"

"We're trying to convince them to talk to us. If we can all agree on terms, General Landry is going to try to get permission to send SG-8."

"Stan Kovacek's team?" She knows it isn't possible to die of a headache, but right now she really wishes she could. It's so bad her skin is crawling with nausea, and she feels as if she'd like to throw up; she sets aside the other half of the doughnut. "It isn't a diplomatic mission; it's tactical."

"General Landry disagrees."

"General Landry—" _is a moron_. She barely keeps from saying the words out loud. "If Anubis arrives on Kelowna while SG-8 is there, they're fucked. We'd be a better choice to organize a resistance group."

"Didn't you have a little problem the last time you were on Kelowna?"

"You read the report. Teal'c and I zatted their prototype _naquadriaah_ bomb."

"And you got medical treatment when you came back," Cam says. 

"Yeah, I'd gotten zapped pretty good but it wasn't a lethal dose. And Teal'c's symbiote protected him." Where's he going with this?

"Well, here's the thing. Apparently the Kelownans figured you _had_ taken a lethal dose of radiation. That's why they let you leave. Now that they know you're alive, they're asking—politely so far—that you be returned to Kelowna to stand trial for espionage and sabotage."

"And one of the terms we're trying to agree on is that the charges against me be dropped."

"Pretty much."

"Then that's another reason he has to send us and nobody else," she says, closing her eyes in weariness.

"Come again?" Cam asks.

"We could never trust they were telling the truth about dropping those charges. If we send SG-8, we risk having them held as hostages until the SGC turns me over to them. If _we_ go, we find out for sure whether they were telling the truth. If they aren't, they might let the rest of you leave to let General Landry know what's going on, or ... I might win the trial. Or, of course, Anubis might show up first and make the whole thing a moot point."

"Nobody's going anywhere until the Kelownans stop saying they're gonna _shoot_ you," Cam says firmly.

"I thought you said there was going to be a trial?" she says.

"Sure, sure. First they plan to try you, _then_ they plan to shoot you."

Dr. Tadeuszowska walks over to her bedside. "Lucky as usual," he says. "No skull fracture, no intracranial bleeding, and—of course—no _Goa'uld_. Your labs are all normal, too. So you can leave the Infirmary. But you can't leave the Base."

"Why not?" she demands automatically, although there's no place else on Earth she wants to be right now.

"We might have missed something. Go to your quarters, take these, and get some sleep. See whoever's on when you wake up." He sets a cup of pills down on the table beside her bed and walks off.

"What are those?" she asks suspiciously. 

Cam picks them up and peers at them. "Guaranteed to cure your headache _and_ give you a good night's sleep," he announces.

"They won't give me a good night's sleep," she says, determined to argue. "They'll just keep me from waking up."

"Here are your clothes, Dr. Jackson," Dorrie says, arriving with a fresh bundle of BDUs.

Clean clothes make her feel even more grubby, and she decides her next stop will be the showers, but when she comes out of the bathroom, dressed, Cam is waiting for her, pills in one hand, coffee in the other.

"You take these now, you should have just about enough time to get to your quarters before they hit you," Cam says.

She regards the pills with loathing. Trapped in hours of drug-sodden nightmares, unable to wake.

"C'mon, baby," Cam says quietly. "You're 'bout out on your feet now."

She shakes her head—not arguing, just trying to clear it. "What if— What if—"

"If there is any solid news, I will wake you myself," Cam says. "I promise."

She nods, and reaches for the cup. The capsules inside are black and yellow, but that tells her nothing. She tosses them back, reaches for the coffee, swallows them down. "I need to order more glasses," she mutters. She only has one pair left.

"We brought back the pair you left on 841," Cam says.

"Two pair, then," she says. _I have two pair left._

They walk side-by-side down the corridor to the elevator and ride from 21 down to 25, where her on-Base quarters are. It's less than ten minutes from the Infirmary to her door, but she imagines she can feel the whatever-she's-taken already starting to work. After Cam cards her door open for her and she steps inside, she holds her watch up in front of her face, trying to read it.

"A little after six," Cam says.

And she got here around four, and it's two hours later, and still no lock on the Abydos Gate. "Tell Sammy to go home," she says. She walks into the bathroom—not turning on the light—and washes her face. Drinks a cup of water. Her movements are slow and clumsy now, the abyss of chemical oblivion beckoning. She goes out into the bedroom and heads for the dresser. She keeps a few items of clothing here. She leans over the dresser, bracing herself against it with one hand, and opens the drawer to pull out a pair of sweatpants.

She hears a quiet click. Cam is hanging up the phone. He's still here? She turns her head toward him, slowly. She wonders what the hell Taddy gave her (and why); it's incredibly strong.

"Sam says she's just heard from General Carter; he isn't near Abydos, but he and Selmak can go take a look."

"'Careful." Oh, god, she sounds drunk.

"Sure they'll be careful. Sam gave them all the details. It's going to be several hours before we hear back from 'em again."

"Go—" She takes a deep breath and forces herself to articulate. "Sammy should go home now. She's done all she can."

"I told her," Cam says. "She said she would." He walks over to her, guides her to the side of the bed—it's already turned down—and sits her down. Then he kneels down in front of her and begins to unlace her boots.

"I'll do that," she says, very slowly. At least her headache has receded to a bearable level. Actually, it's almost gone.

"Just take off your shirt," Cam says, so she does. The buttons give her more trouble than they should.

"Drunk," she says.

"A little high," Cam agrees. "Bet your head doesn't hurt now, though."

"Drugged me," she says, puzzling it out.

"Wanted you to take 'em before you could think up a good reason why you shouldn't," Cam says. "Lie down," he says, so she does, and he covers her up. She realizes she's still wearing her pants, and manages to unbuckle and unbutton them and kick them to the foot of the bed.

"I'll be right here," Cam says. 

She feels the mattress dip as he sits, but she's too far under to answer him now. She's not quite gone, though. Able to hear but unwilling to make the effort to respond. She hears the door open.

"I just wanted to ... boy, she's really out, isn't she?"

Sammy.

"Doc gave her the good stuff." That's Cam.

"And she took it?"

"I told her I'd wake her up if there was any news."

"Dad said it would probably take them at least eight hours to get there. You should get some rest."

"Gonna make sure the bedbugs don't bite. Say "hi" to Cassie for us. Tell her everything's fine."

"Yeah, I think I can pull that off," Sammy says bleakly. "Cam—"

"Shhh."

Then silence, then oblivion.

#

She wakes up standing. Cam is in the middle of dressing her.

"Sam just called from the Control Room," he says, when he sees her eyes focus. "General Carter's reached Abydos."

The rush of adrenaline brings her all the way awake.

"Did he—"

"That's all she said."

He hands her her glasses and she struggles into her socks and boots. She's already wearing her pants and shirt. The moment her boots are on she runs.

She takes the steps into the Control Room two at a time. Sammy's there, sitting at the console. So's Teal'c. General Landry's there, too. None of them notice her. And she knows the news is bad because of the look on Teal'c's face, the way Sammy's sitting—hunched forward, every muscle tense—but she has to _know._

"Say again, General?" General Landry is saying.

"See for yourself," she hears Jacob Carter say. "Sending visual now."

The monitors that edge the room flicker and display the feed from Jacob Carter's ship. Dani looks up.

She's never seen Abydos from space, but she knows what it ought to look like. Patches of green, patches of gold, probably even a few oceans, because Sammy says every world that can support human life has some. The hazy sheen of atmosphere.

The world she sees in the monitor is sharp-edged against the blackness of space; airless. Its surface is crossed with a tracery of glowing gold, the spiderweb cracks of molten rock. She wants to believe this is just another nightmare, one she's been trapped in by the black-and-yellow pills. But it isn't. This is real.

Sammy looks up and sees her. "Dad—" she says.

"I don't know what he hit it with," Jacob is saying, "but I guarantee there's nobody alive down there. The—"

Sammy hits a button on the console, and the pictures of Abydos vanish from the monitor.

"—Dani's here," Sammy finishes.

There's a moment of silence.

"Tell her I'm sorry," Jacob says. "Look, Sammy, Selmak says letting the High Council know about this new weapon has just become a priority. I've gotta go."

"Keep in touch," Sammy says. "Be careful."

" _You_ be careful," Jacob says, and the connection ends.

Abydos is gone and her family—all the family she had left—is dead. Her home is gone. Anubis got what he wanted: a superweapon. He tested the weapon on Abydos.

Sammy gets to her feet, but Dani's already turning away. She sees Cam standing there, and holds up her hand. _Not now._ She walks out of the Control Room.

_"I'm sorry."_ Vala knew.

_"He promises you safe conduct through the Stargate. And to leave Abydos untouched."_ Herak lied. Anubis lied.

_"Say "hi" to Cassie for us. Tell her everything's fine."_ Lying is their job.

_"I don't know what he hit it with, but I guarantee there's nobody alive down there."_ Her family is dead. Her home is gone.

She goes—instinct; you retreat to safe places when you're hurt—to her office.

Her fault.

This is her fault.

She shouldn't have waited. Shouldn't have tried to bargain. She'd been told what the Eye of Ra could do. She knows what Anubis is. The moment she got her hands on that zat she should have used it to take Vala down and then destroyed the Eye.

Should have.

The door to her office opens and the others walk in.

"Go away," she says, turning her head away.

"Come on, Dani," Cam says. "You don't want to be alone right now."

"I am, though." Orphaned twice-over; a clever trick if you can manage it. Apparently she can.

"Your actions made no difference," Teal'c says. "Anubis would have sought out the device regardless of your presence. Having gained it, he would have tested it."

"I had it _in my hand_ ," she says, her voice flat and even. "I had a zat. I could have destroyed it."

"You were trying to get the two of you out of there alive," Cam says.

She turns to look at him; he's crouching down beside her chair. Her muscles ache with tension. "No," she says. "I wasn't. Herak said he'd destroy Nagada if I didn't give it to him. But I couldn't."

"And that was when Vala knocked you out and made the deal," Cam says.

"Probably just as well," Sammy says, and Dani stares at her in shock. "Dani, _think_. Anubis has beaming technology. Herak was probably just stringing you along until the ship could isolate your energy signature in the Gate Room. Then you, Vala, _and_ the Eye would have been on Anubis's ship, and we'd never have gotten you back."

Even now, a thin thrill of horror at the image penetrates her despair. But she shakes her head. _I should have destroyed it._

"Once Anubis went to Abydos, its fate could not be changed, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c says. "If he failed to gain the prize he sought there, he would undoubtedly have exterminated all life on the planet in retaliation. Even without possession of a weapon of this power, he possessed sufficient ability to do so."

_You'd know_ , she thinks, and the spitefulness of the thought shocks her. She loves Teal'c. "But he _does_ have it," she says. _Because of me._ She pushes her glasses up on her forehead and rubs her eyes wearily. No bodies to bury. No place to say the prayers for the dead. No stones upon which to lay the grave-offerings. _Dead, all dead._

Cam gets to his feet. "And there's got to be something in that we can use."

"You mean before he comes back to Earth again and kills us all this time?" she says.

"Yeah," Cam says softly. "Before that." He drops his hands to her shoulders and rests them there. "What does every _Goa'uld_ want?"

"Power," Teal'c says, in a disapproving rumble.

"And what does every _Goa'uld_ want every other _Goa'uld_ not to have?" Cam asks.

"Power," Sammy says, sounding puzzled. "If they ever formed a stable alliance, they'd be unstoppable, but they don't trust each other enough for that."

"When do warring factions form stable alliances?" Cam asks.

Dani raises her head from her hands. _What is this, "Introduction to Political Science?"_ "In the face of a greater threat," she says irritably.

" _Which_ Anubis with his superweapon now represents," Cam finishes. "Last time he made a run at Earth he'd been picking off _Goa'uld_ right-left-and-center because he had Kull Warriors and all they had was Jaffa. Now he's back, and the _Goa'uld've_ been lying pretty low. You said that was why the Lucian Alliance was expanding."

And selling weapons to Tegalus in exchange for whatever those "desert rocks" were, and if they did it once they'll do it again, and… Her heart aches, but slowly her mind is becoming engaged. She can't undo the past. She has to change the future. Earth is her home too.

"For centuries, the keystone of _Tok'ra_ strategy has been to keep the _Goa'uld_ Empire at war with itself," she says slowly. "They've always been afraid of what would happen if it ever became organized under a strong leader. Or against a strong threat. That's why they object to us so much. They think we could provide that threat." 

"Maybe we could," Cam says, starting to rub her shoulders now. "But I'm thinking Anubis _definitely_ can. And I'm also thinking if the rest of the _Goa'uld_ got together on this, they might be able to give him a run for his money. What do you think?"

Anubis bred up Kull Warriors to replace Jaffa. They're nearly-indestructible and unquestioningly loyal. Kull Warriors are a tactical advantage when your foes' armies are turning on them, but when all is said and done, they're just a better model of something the _Goa'uld_ already have: soldiers. But the _Goa'uld_ don't fight their most serious battles on the ground. They fight in space. And Anubis now has a weapon that can destroy an enemy fleet with one shot.

"We need to tell them." She looks at Teal'c and Sammy, then closes her eyes. "We need to show them the pictures from Abydos."

"Yu is our best bet," she hears Sammy say. "He's been ... reasonably cooperative to us in the past. And he really doesn't like Anubis."

She feels Cam's knuckles come up to brush her cheek. "We're going to need you to work out the message, baby," he says gently.

She nods. "If any of the other surviving System Lords happens to pick it up, that could work to our advantage. The more of them who know, the better."

"Good. You can get started as soon as you get back from the Infirmary."

She looks up at him, startled.

"Doc wanted you rechecked, remember?" Cam says.

"Oh, but—"

"Won't take long," Cam says.

She's too tired to argue with him.

#

"Are you really sure dropping this on Dani was the best thing right now?" Sam asks.

They're—all three of them—waiting for her outside the Infirmary. He knows she hates "hovering," but right now it's hard to stop. The last twenty-four hours have been nobody's idea of fun, starting with waking up back in the SGC eight hours after they'd gone down—they'd missed their scheduled return time, and General Landry had sent a search party—to discover only three of them were there. No sign of Dani anywhere, though one of the Search Teams on 841 had found her glasses. And nothing to do but wait, because they didn't have the first idea of where to start looking for her.

Knowing if he even got her back, she might not _be_ her.

When they'd gotten her call, Sam had warned him it might still be a trap. She might have been taken as a host. They might have done something else to her. The only reason they even considered bringing her back to the SGC was because Sam would be able to sense the presence of any _naquaadah_ —symbiote or bomb—she'd been booby-trapped with.

No _Goa'uld_. No bomb. Just an urgent warning about a new superweapon and the news Abydos was in danger. It had probably been gone before she'd dialed home. Although he knows, from things she's let slip now and then over the past year, she really doesn't think of Earth as "home." Abydos was home. The place where her friends and family lived.

"Better than giving her time to think," he says. "That is something she does _not_ need right now. She needs something to do."

Sam shakes her head, looking at the floor. "It's her birthday next week," she says randomly.

"I know," Cam answers. And he knows "something to do" will only delay the inevitable, and she hasn't gotten time to get used in advance to the idea of losing Abydos. Not like February. She's still in shock, and sooner or later that's going to wear off, and when it does ... it may not be a good time. SG-1 isn't the only thing holding the galaxy together, but there are days when he feels as if it might be. And either Anubis hasn't gone to Kelowna yet, or the Kelownans are being pretty quiet about it.

Dani walks out of the Infirmary. There's a raw bruise on her forehead, but the bandage is gone. Dark circles under her eyes, and her face is blank, and all he wants to do in that instant is tuck her under his arm and _go,_ and not stop until the two of them are walking through Momma's front door back home. And he knows if he did, even money says Momma's front door wouldn't be there much longer. Better than even. Pretty much a sure bet.

She stops when she sees them, and he knows she isn't feeling any of the things she should right now, because she doesn't dare. And he knows she'll hold off feeling them for as long as she has the strength to do it, hoping they'll be gone by then. And he knows they won't be. "Sammy, I'll need your help," she says. "I'm going to work out what to say to Yu, and after I have, we need to put it together with what your dad sent." She pauses for a moment, and her mouth curls slightly. It's not a smile; not by a long chalk. "I suppose somebody ought to tell General Landry our plan?"

"Yeah." Cam sighs. "I'll go see if he's got a minute."

She nods, and walks past him toward her office.

And then he can see if he's got a chance of getting her to eat without getting the food thrown in his face, because half a chocolate doughnut in twenty-four hours does not count as food.

#

_< "To the Great Lord, the Peace Absolving, Central August Spirit Exalted, Ancient Buddha, Most Pious and Honorable, His Highness the Jade-Emperor, the exalted Lord Yu Wang Shang Ti, High Sovereign, greetings—">_

The _Goa'uld_ do not think like humans. They aren't human. They aren't even mammals. They're alien parasites, halfway between snake and insect, and despite the fact that they walk around in human bodies (most of them) their language reflects it. The Jaffa dialect is more flexible: a human language, for human minds. To compose her message, she must not only speak in _Goa'uld_ —a language she knows all-too-well by now—but think like a _Goa'uld_. The ritual forms are complex but easy. The substance of the message is difficult. It's not even a case of being able to compose the message in English and then translate it into _Goa'uld_. That would be simple. 

And it would not say the things she needs it to say.

There are a thousand words for "betrayal" in _Goa'uld_. A thousand ways to speak of lies, of treachery, of deception. They've spent too long thinking Anubis was no longer a threat. Dead, defeated, off hiding while he rebuilt his power base. None of these things is true. He's taking up right where he left off. And they have no idea what he's doing, what he wants to do, or how close to doing it he's gotten. At the summit meeting she attended, five years ago, he only asked for a position on the Council. They saw his attack on Earth as his bid for that: until he was on the Council, he wasn't bound by the Protected Planets Treaty. But she doesn't think he cares about that now. If he hasn't claimed it already, she thinks he's going for the position Ra once held. Supreme System Lord.

The _Goa'uld_ have a feudal hierarchy. System Lords, Overlords, Underlords, minor courtiers. The Supreme System Lord rules over all. For uncounted millennia, it was Ra—Ra who discovered the _Tau'ri_ and filled the galaxy with transplanted human civilizations, Ra who caused the first Jaffa to be created, Ra who ruled over the _Goa'uld_ Empire with savage force until the _Tau'ri_ killed him, and for a decade no other _Goa'uld_ has been powerful enough to claim ultimate rule over the Empire.

Yu said Anubis was banished from the Council for atrocities. It's hard to imagine what a _Goa'uld_ would consider "atrocities." Not the destruction of a world—

_she won't think of that now_

—but whatever it was, she doubts he's moderated his behavior since. They know half the _Goa'uld_ they'd been keeping track of have just ... vanished. Left their domains empty, left a power vacuum for the Lucian Alliance to step into. But it isn't a power vacuum at all. It's Anubis gathering his forces somewhere out of sight. 

It was possible to survive in a galaxy Ra ruled. Not a good life, or a happy one, but survival. She's starting to think if Anubis manages to claim ultimate power, not even survival will be possible.

She does not say so in her message to Yu. There's no point. She needs to tell him Anubis has a weapon of ultimate power. Yu will understand the rest. What he does about it is anyone's guess. He's the most ancient of the surviving _Goa'uld_. And he's insane.

#

Cam enters her office, carrying a tray. He sets it on her worktable.

"Did it ever occur to you it's beneath your dignity to fetch and carry?" she snaps. Her voice is hoarse. She doesn't know how long she's been trying out versions of her message to Yu, and speaking _Goa'uld_ for that long makes her throat hurt.

"I talked to General Landry," Cam says, not answering her directly. "He says we've got a "go" for our plan."

"I'm almost done."

Cam sets a cup of coffee at her elbow. She picks it up and sips gratefully. "Sorry," she says.

"The sandwich can wait, but the ice cream is going to melt," he says. "It's okay," he adds.

She takes the bowl. The cold is soothing.

"So what are you saying?"

She starts to tell him, then realizes she's speaking _Goa'uld_. She concentrates, trying to think of the sense of the message in English.

"I start by reciting Yu's titles and dignities, and praising his wise rule and benevolence. It's boilerplate. Then I tell him that of course he is already aware of the existence and history of the six Eyes once possessed by Apophis, Osiris, Tiamat, Hecate, Sokar, and Ra, and that takes a while, because they all have ceremonial titles too. Then I say that as he is _also_ already aware, each of these jewels alone is powerful, and combined they are even more powerful, and then I congratulate him that all six jewels are now in the possession of Anubis—Lord of the Hallowed Land, Foremost of the Westerners, Governor of the Divine House, He Who Dwells upon the Mountain—who will undoubtedly use them with wise benevolence, in the fashion which the Jade Emperor is already aware Anubis has recently demonstrated. And I mention he's going to Kelowna to pick up their _naquadriaah_."

Cam frowns in puzzlement. "He knows this message is coming from us, right? The, uh, _Tau'ri_?"

"Unless I want to insult him to the point he has to invade Earth in defiance of the Treaty, this is how I phrase it," she says wearily. "There isn't a lot of middle-ground in _Goa'uld_."

"And mentioning Kelowna?"

"Hard for Yu to attack Anubis if he doesn't know where he is. Yes, Yu could get there first and try to claim the _naquadriaah_ himself."

"But if Anubis _does_ show up at Kelowna, the only thing likely to chase him away is another _Goa'uld_ ," Cam says, reasoning it out.

"A lot of other _Goa'uld_. And you're right. We only have Vala's word for it he's going there."

"Do it," Cam says. "Once he's there, it'll be too late to call up a fleet of his buddies to take him out."

The bowl is empty. Cam takes it out of her hand. She goes back to her coffee. "What's the status of our talks with the Kelownans?" she asks.

"Still going back and forth. They want to send a negotiating team here so things will move faster. General Landry's okayed that. They should be coming through in about an hour."

"If their planet's still there. What time is it?"

"A little after 1700."

She thinks back, doing the math in her head. Over twelve hours since she arrived back at the SGC. "What's taking him so long? If Kelowna was his next stop, he should be there by now."

"Let's be glad he isn't," Cam says. "You haven't had anything to eat all day." Two different subjects.

"Is there more coffee?" she asks. If she has anything solid in her stomach for the next thing she has to do, she may throw up.

He takes her cup and fills it again. She glances over her shoulder. There's a carafe on the tray.

"I need Sammy now," she says reluctantly. She starts to get to her feet.

"I'll do it," Cam says. He walks over to the wall and dials Sammy's extension. A few minutes later Sammy shows up carrying a tape. The rest of the world has moved on to CDs and DVDs, but here under Cheyenne Mountain, magnetic tape still rules. Dani supposes there must be a reason, but she's never figured out what it is.

"This is everything Dad sent," Sammy says. "It's about five minutes."

"We'll have to freeze on the last image, then," Dani says. "I've timed out my message. It runs seven minutes fifteen."

"I've already added the coordinates and the Gate address to the image," Sammy says grimly. "He'll know what he's looking at."

"And where to go to see it live," Dani says. She won't think about Abydos. Abydos is gone. But in death, perhaps it can become a weapon to destroy its destroyer.

"I need the keyboard," Sammy says, and Dani gets to her feet. She sways, shaky with too long sitting in one place, and Cam puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her. Sammy feeds the tape into the machine, taps several keys, and a moment later the image comes up on the monitor.

Dani sits down again.

Jacob recorded more than she saw in the Control Room. At first she sees only a tiny gold disc against the blackness of space: the first image he would have seen when his ship dropped out of hyperspace. The coordinates—in _Goa'uld_ —glow green at the bottom right hand corner of the screen. The image quickly grows larger, filling the screen, gaining detail. The ship makes a close pass by one of the three moons of Abydos as it approaches the planet. The last of the footage she has already seen: the hell-hot surface of a lifeless world with the six symbols of a Gate address no one will ever dial again running down the left side of the screen.

_Not my home,_ she tells herself. _Not my home._

She plays it through one more time, this time mouthing the words of her message to check the timing. Drinks coffee to soothe her throat. "Okay," she says. "I'm going to record now."

Dani's done the rest of this more times than she can count: multi-media presentations for lectures and briefings. She concentrates on the technical aspects of it, refusing to acknowledge the content. She has to start over twice, but on the third try, she completes her message without hesitation or error. She stands again, and Sammy completes the task of transferring the completed message to the tape.

"I'll get this sent off," Sammy says. "There's a good chance Lord Yu will get it."

"Or someone will," Cam says.

"For our purposes, it almost doesn't matter who," Sammy says. "So long as the _Goa'uld_ realize Anubis is a greater threat to them than anything else is."

Dani rubs her eyes. "I have to talk to Simon."

"Simon," Cam says. "Gardner?"

"Osiris served Anubis for two years. Anubis used him to present his petition to the System Lords at their summit. Simon remembers that."

"Anything he knows is going to be years out of date."

"The _Goa'uld_ don't change that fast."

"What are you looking for?" He puts a plate at her elbow. Automatically, she picks up half the sandwich.

"I don't know. Anything." She takes a bite and makes a face—it tastes vile—but chews anyway.

"We debriefed him pretty thoroughly when you got him back."

"They weren't looking for the same things. I didn't do most of it. Simon—Osiris—they both—he..." Hard to separate it out, when the inclinations of the host and the desires of the _Goa'uld_ dovetail so terribly. "Even after Osiris was removed, Simon was ... a little obsessed with me for a while. He's better now. We need ... everything Osiris knows about Anubis. Plans, bases ... everything." 

"You think he'd have told him that much?"

" _Goa'uld_ brag. Isis and Osiris were two of the most powerful _Goa'uld_ of Ra's court. They turned on him and he exacted the ultimate punishment: he removed them from their hosts and sealed them into canopic jars. When Osiris escaped and found out Ra was dead, he _should_ have simply gone off and started rebuilding his old power base. His greatest enemy was gone. Instead, he turned up at the summit meeting as a vassal of Anubis's. Simon said Anubis and Osiris had been allies before—Osiris hadn't known about Anubis's banishment from the Council because he'd been in a jar for about five thousand years—and that Anubis convinced Osiris the quickest way to regain his former power was to serve him. How? And what else did Anubis tell him?"

"People have probably asked him," Cam suggests.

She sighs. She can't explain. Simon Gardner. Arrogance, brilliance, ambition. Unfair, _horrible_ , to suggest or even believe that any part of him cooperated in the soul-rape of becoming a host. That Simon could ever have been _okay_ with any of the things Osiris did. Osiris murdered David Jordan, and both of them—Simon and Dani—had loved David dearly. But she knows—too—that people so rarely ask the right questions. Simon was debriefed for six months—in a bizarre _mésalliance_ of interrogation and psychiatric care—then allowed to return to work. He's back in Chicago now, at the Institute. She's visited him there twice, on SGC business.

She knows he remembers everything from his time as a host. She knows he's told his interrogators he doesn't. But sometimes, looking into his eyes, she hasn't been sure whether she's seeing Simon, or Osiris. She hasn't told. Osiris itself is dead, and Simon is harmless. Even if he isn't quite sane, he's under close surveillance, and will be for the rest of his life.

"I need to talk to him, Cam," she says.

She hears him sigh: acceptance. "Don't think this is a good time for you to go off to Chicago. I'll talk to General Landry. See about him coming here."

"Thanks." She looks down at the plate. The sandwich is gone. She doesn't remember eating it, or what it was. She runs a hand through her hair, and it occurs to her she's at least a day late for a shower. Maybe it will help her focus. She knows there's work to do. There always is. The life she was supposed to step back into —yesterday? —the day before? When they all came back from their routine survey of 841...

...and lived happily ever after.

That was Wednesday. "What day is this?" she asks.

"Still Thursday. Evening," Cam says.

"You should go home," she says. If this is Thursday, they'd been supposed to have the day off. Because of Cassie. "Cassie?" she asks.

"Sam put her on the plane," Cam says. "Everything's fine."

"I'm going to shower."

She walks out of her office, heading automatically toward the Women's Shower Room, then remembers her quarters has a shower, too. And more privacy. She goes down to 25. Her bed is still unmade; she doesn't like strangers wandering around her quarters; when she's in residence they don't come in to do the housekeeping chores unless specifically summoned. 

She pulls out a fresh set of BDUs—uniform of the day is blue, and fortunately she has a set of those clean—and goes to shower. Not really the best water-pressure down here; the water pattering on the tiles sounds like rain.

Memory comes unbidden. The Season of Rains on Abydos.

Monsoons, really. For a month, it rained. The desert turned to mud. The thornbushes fruited; she expected flowers, but no flowers bloomed on Abydos except in painted frescos. There was enough water everywhere for her to take an actual _bath_ , and both Sha're and Skaara had laughed at her for her delight in that simple—peculiar—pleasure.

Almost everyone had left Nagada for the deep desert—it was winter, time to tend the fields and the crops. In summer they worked the mines for Ra, but not this year, and never again. A few people stayed behind, to tend the city. She'd stayed too—so Sha're and Skaara had stayed with her—promising herself that next winter she'd go to see the Oasis of Remembrance, the _yaphetta_ fields, the date groves. But there was so much to do and see and discover at Nagada. And next winter never came. And now it never will.

She clings to the tiled wall of the shower cubicle as the water washes over her, and for a moment the pain of her loss is sharp and unbelievable. It's Janet, lying in her arms on 666, gasping out her last moments of life and still trying to comfort her. It's Jack, sitting in his living room making bad jokes to the three of them, and they all know the Ancient database is already unspooling in his brain, slowly killing him. Jack again, behind the wall of ice, beginning his long dying. _"Aveo, amacus."_ It's Abydos, and Kasuf-Skaara-Neshaat- _Sha're_ —her family, her friends, her brother's child that she'll never hold, dead, dead, _dead..._

The weight of her dead numbs her like a beating. When you're beaten it hurts at first—the shock of the first blows—and it hurts later, as the body assess its damage. In the middle, though, it doesn't really hurt too much. You're used to it. Accustomed. You can become accustomed to anything, she knows. She can become accustomed to this. Abydos. Tegalus. Where's the difference? She loved one and she didn't love the other and she fought to save them both and she failed each of them. She should at least be used to failure by now; she fails so often. The list of planets SG-1 has left in flaming ruin behind them is extensive. Euronda. Tollana. She even helped Cha'ka start a civil war on a planet whose name she still doesn't know.

She finishes showering, dries herself, dresses.

She feels bruised.

There's no time for this.

She goes up to the Commissary for another carafe of coffee, then back to her office. The transcripts of Simon's debriefings are on the mainframe, and she pulls them up. She's gone through them a dozen times—more—but maybe there's something here she's missed. She's not sure how long she's been reading—not long—when the door to her office opens. Cam again.

"General Landry wants you in the Conference Room," he says.

She glances at her watch. After 2000. Neither Cam nor the General should still be here, really. "The Kelownans," she says. 

Cam sighs. "They want to talk to you."

"Who is it?"

"Ambassador Dreylock—she's the one in charge—Commander Hale—someone important in their military, sounds like—and a Jonas Quinn."

"Jonas was a special advisor to High Minister Velis five years ago. He was—" she pushes her glasses up and rubs her eyes "—present at the time."

"Probably why he's here," Cam says. "C'mon."

She gets to her feet. "Do they still want to put me on trial?" She'd almost like to be shot. If they'd just shut up and _do it_. But not now. She has promises to keep.

"They're open to discussion," Cam says, as they leave her office. "Dreylock's said their _naquadriaah_ program, ah, sorta proved you might'a been right."

"They blew something else up. Accidentally."

"Got it. So now General Landry wants you to convince them Anubis is enough of a problem that they need help."

"What they need to do is start evacuating immediately." It won't help. Unless things have changed radically on Kelowna in the last five years, they're still locked into a Cold War with the Andarii and the Tiranians. The existence of the Stargate is a military secret on Kelowna, just as it is on Earth. And even if it weren't, the number of people Kelowna could get through its Stargate would only be a fraction of its population.

"Talk to 'em," Cam says.

They reach the Conference Room. Of those present, only Jonas gets to his feet.

"Dr. Jackson," he says. "It's good to see you again."

"It's good to see you, too, Jonas." Diplomatic formalities. The three of them—she, Cam, and Jonas—sit down.

Dreylock turns to General Landry. "My government requested, at the time of the incident, that if Dr. Jackson survived, she be returned to Kelowna to stand trial for espionage and sabotage. We consider it an act of bad faith she was not."

She looks at Jonas. He was there. He knows the truth. He shakes his head slightly. Hasn't told it? Or wasn't believed?

"And we certainly apologize for leaving your government with the impression she would be, Ambassador," General Landry says. "But I think it's time for us to all agree no act of sabotage took place and move on. You folks have bigger problems."

"I'm not sure the people of Kelowna can agree," Commander Hale says. "We have only your word for that, General. And you've just admitted your word is worthless."

"What about mine?" she says. "I was there. Your device was going into overload. If the core wasn't removed, it would have exploded, and probably leveled the city, and we wouldn't be having this conversation. I shot out the observation window to get into the lab."

"To steal the device!" Commander Hale says.

"To get to it to remove the core. I realized if I touched it, I'd die. I ordered my companion to destroy it instead."

She's still lying. She hadn't been thinking that clearly at all. Once she'd begun firing at the window, Jonas had lunged for her, guessing her plan. Teal'c had grappled with him, throwing him to the ground. She'd thrown herself at the window, shattering it. And Teal'c had zatted the device out of existence before she'd been able to get to her feet. The Kelownans had blamed her at the time, and she'd seen no reason to drag Teal'c into it.

"Your actions set our _naquadriaah_ research program back by almost a year, Dr. Jackson," Ambassador Dreylock says. "Yet you don't seem in the least remorseful for your actions."

"For saving everyone in your city? No. Ask Tomas Lee if you don't believe me. I'm sure he can tell you what would have happened if it exploded. He was quick enough to leave."

Ambassador Dreylock looks as if she's sucking lemons. "Unfortunately, Tomas Lee did not survive his exposure to the device," she admits reluctantly. "None of the scientists did."

"So it's not exactly Dr. Jackson's fault your research program hit a slowdown, is it?" Cam says. "And I'm thinking she saved a whole lot of lives that day. And she could save a whole lot more right now if you'll listen to her."

"If you'll excuse us for a moment, General?" Ambassador Dreylock says. General Landry nods. The three Kelownans get up and walk to the other side of the room.

Dani gets up and walks over to the coffee. Cam, Graham, and General Landry join her. Graham pours coffee for General Landry first; she still finds that odd, though of course General Hammond must have had an aide as well; Generals do.

"How long has this been going on?" she asks.

General Landry frowns. He's got an excellent poker face, but she knows he isn't fond of people he thinks are wasting his time. "About ninety minutes. They admit to difficulties with their _naquadriaah_ program. They even admit that—two years ago—they had a repeat of the identical incident you prevented."

"They want something," she says, sipping her coffee. "They're going to agree to drop all charges against me in exchange for a good-faith gift on Earth's part."

"Looks like," Cam agrees.

"What do you think they're going to want, Dr. Jackson?" General Landry says.

"Weapons technology," she says instantly. "They're at war. It's a similar political situation to the one on Tegalus, actually, from the little we were able to learn in our initial contact. Three nations instead of two. It could provide us an opening to send a Gate Team to Kelowna, sir."

General Landry is looking dubious, but the Kelownans are returning to the table. They return as well.

"You've said you believe our planet faces a threat from outside," Ambassador Dreylock says, when they're all seated again.

"We have reason to believe a very powerful _Goa'uld_ , named Anubis, intends to come to your planet in search of the element you call _naquadriaah_ ," General Landry says. The Kelownans know about the _Goa'uld_. Ten thousand years ago, a _Goa'uld_ named Thanos ruled there. She's pretty sure he blew up a large part of the planet experimenting with _naquadriaah_.

"We have very little _naquadriaah_ ," Ambassador Dreylock says, shaking her head. "Surely he would not—"

"He's a _Goa'uld_ ," Dani says. "He's going to come to your planet and take everything he wants, and there's nothing you can do to stop him."

"The Kelownan people will fight," Commander Hale says. "The _naquadriaah_ bomb is the most powerful weapon yet seen. I imagine it would make even your Anubis think twice."

"No—" Dani says.

"Hey, wait," Cam says. "You guys have a _naquadriaah_ bomb?"

Ambassador Dreylock is glaring daggers at Commander Hale. Hale is looking a combination of proud and uncomfortable.

"Jonas?" Dani says. He's the weak link among the Kelownans. He has a conscience.

Jonas nods. "You told me once building bombs for peace was a stupid idea. That we'd have to use it. We did. Tirania and the Andarii Federation sued for peace immediately."

He doesn't look happy about it.

"So you see, Colonel. When Anubis comes, we will fight," Commander Hale says triumphantly.

"Maybe," Cam says agreeably. "You guys got a way of getting one of your bombs into orbit?"

The Kelownans look at each other. Cam knows they don't, and so does she. Unless they've made major strides in the last five years, they're only slightly more advanced technologically than Tegalus ... was.

"Let us propose to help each other," Ambassador Dreylock says. "The Kelownan government agrees to drop all charges against Dr. Jackson. We will agree, in fact, the entire incident was merely an ... unfortunate misunderstanding. In exchange, isn't it only reasonable you provide us with some way to defend ourselves from this ... invader from space?"

She leans over to Cam. "We need Sammy," she whispers.

Cam nods, and gets up to speak to General Landry. Landry nods in turn, and Cam goes over to the phone. Dani supposes nobody's getting either sleep or downtime tonight.

"We're calling in a technical expert to address this issue," General Landry says, as Cam hangs up the phone and leaves the conference room. "Certainly I agree with your position in principle. But you also need to consider alternative strategies."

"Such as?" Commander Hale, this time. Bristling.

"You need to evacuate as much of your population as you can through the Stargate while there's still time," Dani says. "We can provide you with a list of suitable worlds—"

"This is entirely unacceptable!" Ambassador Dreylock says.

"We will never consider it!" Hale.

"Purely as a precautionary measure," General Landry says, but the Kelownans aren't listening. They're back to denouncing everything in sight—her, Earth, the SGC—as liars, villains, traitors, and thieves. Undoubtedly out to steal Kelowna's oh-so-advanced technology. She gets up and walks away from the table. She can't stand this. They're arguing about _nothing_ and Anubis is going to come and kill them all.

Jonas follows her. "Dr. Jackson," he says. She raises a hand. _How many times do I have to tell you—_ He smiles. "Dani. It's good to see you. I thought you were dead."

"I get that a lot. You never told them?"

For a moment he looks troubled. "I tried. They didn't want to know. All they could see was the _potential_." He makes a sour face. "Even when we had the second accident. Commander Hale was delighted. He said it proved the potential of our new weapon."

"How many died?"

"Not many. We'd moved the lab outside the city for security reasons. And our scientists were working on a much smaller scale. But... we bombed the Andarii capital. When the pictures came back, everyone was cheering. All I could think of was the thousands of dead. I've never seen destruction on such a scale. Never."

_I have._

"Jonas, Anubis has a weapon that can destroy planets. He has fleets of _ha'tak_. He has _al'kesh_ and Death Gliders. Spaceships. Space _fleets_. You have to convince your people to start evacuation immediately."

The smile fades. "Then you won't help us?"

She shakes her head; disagreement, not negation. "We'll try."

Sammy arrives; Cam has obviously briefed her on the way. She sits down. Dani and Jonas return to the table.

"I have an idea on how we can help the Kelownans defend their planet from Anubis," she says. "But to make it work, I'm going to need the technical specifications on your _naquadriaah_ devices."

"Unacceptable!" Commander Hale says. Ambassador Dreylock is shaking her head.

Dani catches Sammy's eye and tilts her head. _Exchange of hostages?_ Sammy nods.

"Maybe if Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson went back to Kelowna with you? You could send me the technical specifications while they look over your planetary defenses and see what you need to do to improve them."

Ambassador Dreylock inclines her head. "I suppose that is an acceptable proposal, Colonel Carter. Please allow me to present it to the First Minister."

"Oh, feel free," General Landry says, waving a hand. At least he waits until the Kelownan delegation is gone before rounding on Sammy. "I hope you have a very good explanation for this, Colonel Carter, because I do _not_ like surprises."

"Yes, sir," Sammy says gamely. "We've theorized that the destructive power of _naquadriaah_ must exceed that of _naquaadah_ by an enormous factor. If we can get one of the Kelownan bombs into space, we can certainly get it through the shields on Anubis's ship."

"Ah... we can?" Cam asks.

Sammy smiles at him triumphantly. "We can. Remember the phase-shifting technology we found in Osiris's complex on P48-782?"

"Makes you invisible and drives you crazy?" Cam says.

" _And_ shifts you sufficiently out-of-phase you can pass through solid objects. Or _Goa'uld_ force shields," Sammy says. "We only have one working generator available, but we'd probably only get one shot anyway."

"Leaving the question of how to get it there," Cam says.

"The F-302s are designed to be disassembled into parts small enough to pass through a Stargate," Sammy says. "We take one through and reassemble it on Kelowna."

"How long will that take, Colonel Carter?" Landry asks.

Sammy hesitates slightly. "With a full crew, a week, sir."

"We have no reason to think Anubis will hold off that long. Or that the Kelownans would be cooperative about letting us take the 302 back afterward," General Landry says.

"We've got a _tel'tak_ ," Dani says. It's the only one Earth has, but Jack modified the engines so it's faster than any other _Goa'uld_ cargo ship.

"Wouldn't like to try flying my way past a _ha'tak's_ defenses in that," Cam says consideringly.

"No," Sammy says. "And you couldn't fit a 302 inside a _tel'tak_. But if you outfitted a _tel'tak_ with magnetic grapples, you could attach a 302 to it, the same way we attached the Stargate to the X-302. We wouldn't have to take it apart at all. It would reach Kelowna in less than a day."

General Landry nods. "Go ahead, Colonel. See about rigging up the cargo ship. And _if_ the Kelownans keep their part of the bargain, we'll see about the rest of it. Dismissed."

Dani wants to ask Sammy if it will work, but she knows Sammy doesn't know yet. She wants to ask if Yu has gotten the message, but it's not as if he'd let them know. She turns away to head back to her office.

"Food first," Cam says, taking her arm. Sammy comes with them.

Teal'c joins them in the Commissary. She stands on the serving line, and Cam and Sammy add things to her tray. Pie. Lasagna. Bread. Coffee. It isn't worth the effort to protest, so she doesn't. At the table, the other three talk around her. Sammy is talking about how quickly the _tel'tak_ can be adapted to carry an F-302. About rigging a remote trigger for the phase generator.

"Too risky," Cam says, shaking his head. "They might be able to jam the signal."

"I'm not sure I can rig up something that will let you activate it from inside the cockpit," Sammy says, shaking her head. "You know what kind of shielding those things have."

"Need to be on a timer, then," Cam says.

"And you'll need to release it just before the timer goes off," Sammy says. "Otherwise you'll be affected too."

She realizes, listening to them, they're both assuming Cam will fly the 302 against Anubis's ship. But who else? Cam is a fighter pilot. He's flown against Anubis before.

"All we need is for the Kelownans to come through," Cam says.

"Surely they wish to preserve themselves from the wrath of Anubis?" Teal'c says.

"They don't believe us." She's disassembled the lasagna, but she hasn't really eaten much. She picks up the slice of bread-and-butter and takes a bite. It's tasteless and greasy. She sets it down again. "Not really."

"We do what we can," Cam says quietly.

She looks up at him. What they _can_ do isn't enough. "If we went anyway...?" she says. She knows Earth has bombs of its own. Big ones.

Sammy shakes her head. "Even the Mark X Gatebuster doesn't pack the punch a _naquadriaah_ -enriched device must. Even if we were lucky enough to set it off inside the ship itself, I don't think it would even slow him down."

Cam sighs. "Better hope the Kelownans've been building a Doomsday Device, then."

Dani's sure they have.

Sammy goes off to start working—she needs to build the timing device—and Teal'c's going to help her. The _tel'tak_ and the 302 have already been flown to Peterson, and the modifications begun, even though the Kelownans may not come back at all.

"Don't suppose there's any point in suggesting you get your head down for a couple of hours?" Cam says.

"Anubis is using Asgard technology," she says, shaking her head. _No, I'm not going to sleep_. "The beaming technology. He got it from Thor. But _how_ did he get it from Thor?"

"Mind probe," Cam says. He's read the mission reports.

"Begs the question. The _Goa'uld_ don't have any technology that would work against the Asgard. But Anubis did."

"So he found something new. They're scavengers."

"Yes. What? Where? What else did he find?" They've wanted to know the answer for a long time. Maybe Simon knows.

"Can't help you there," Cam says. "Doesn't look like you're gonna eat that."

She looks down at her tray. The pie—blueberry—has been reduced to wreckage, crust and filling blended evenly together. Uneaten. She takes a reluctant bite, sets her fork down. "No," she says.

"C'mon, then," Cam says.

Not back to her office. Up to the surface—the "back door" entrance that can only be reached by five flights of stairs and then a long climb up a ladder. Cam cards them out. It's night. In the distance she can see the lights of the security fence, but here it's dark. The air is warm. Summer night. Moon and stars, pretty and peaceful, and in the distance she hears the plaintive wail of a coyote, searching for love or dinner. The air smells of pine. How many more nights like this will there ever be for Earth? 

"Thought you could use a breath of fresh air," Cam says. "That recycled stuff gets old after a while."

She leans against the door of the access-way and closes her eyes. She wishes she could still hope for things. She doesn't think she can. Will Yu believe the message? Will he attack? Will the information disrupt Anubis's alliances—if any—among the System Lords sufficiently to make a difference? Will the Kelownans believe them? Can they take out Anubis's ship (if he comes, if Yu doesn't, if…) 

After a few more minutes, they go back inside.

A couple of hours later—close to 2300 now, and she's numb and weary and she wants oblivion and she wishes sleep were the way to get it—she's paged to the Control Room. The Kelownans are ready to send Jonas Quinn through with their technical specifications. Naturally, they want Dani and Cam to come through first.

"Colonel Mitchell?" General Landry asks, away from the mike.

"In their place, I'd be asking the same thing," Cam says. He looks rumpled. Dani hopes he was sleeping when the call came. Somebody should.

General Landry nods, and tells the Kelownans Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson will come through in fifteen minutes.

They go to gear up.

In the hope they'd be going, she'd already re-packed her backpack. Everything from clean underwear and extra socks to all the chocolate she had in her desk. A bag of coffee, just in case she gets a chance to make any before the end of the world. Spare clips for her Beretta. An extra blank journal. Not a lot of chance to do anything archaeological this trip, but she's packed all her extra camcorder cassettes, and tapes for her voice recorder, since (at least in theory) they're supposed to be assessing the Kelownans' state of military preparedness.

In the gear-up room she transfers a few items from her backpack to her tac-vest: chocolate, spare glasses, camera, a couple of clips. Checks to make sure her antihistamines and caffeine pills are in their proper places. They do a radio check and head down to the Armory. Sidearms for both of them, P90 for Cam. Automatically, the armorer hands her her quarterstaff.

"Might want to leave that here this time," Cam says. "'Less you think you're gonna need to hit somebody when we get there."

She hands it back. The shouldn't be walking very far, and she might need both hands free.

They walk into the Gate Room and stand at the foot of the ramp. The graveyard shift Gate operator—Muñoz?—dials.

The Stargate engages and they walk through.

Dreylock, Hale, and Jonas are waiting for them on the other side, along with a number of soldiers in the drab Kelownan uniforms. The Stargate's been moved: four years ago it was in a museum. There seems to be a universal rule that all government-controlled Stargates, everywhere, have to be concealed in basements. The one on Tegalus was in an underground bunker. The one on Kelowna is in a sub-sub-level of the Defense Ministry. 

"We had the Stargate moved for security reasons," Commander Hale says, seeing her look around. "The Defense Ministry is the most secure location on all of Kelowna."

"Probably a good idea," Cam says equitably, though Dani doesn't really like the idea of their best way off this planet being in a "secure location"—meaning a place they can't easily get to. He nods at the box Jonas is carrying. "That the stuff Colonel Carter asked for?"

"This is all our current research on _naquadriaah_ ," Ambassador Dreylock says, sounding as if she doesn't think any of this is a good idea. "Including our weapons research. Jonas Quinn will remain on Earth to explain anything Colonel Carter doesn't understand."

_And to make sure we don't do anything with this stuff you don't like,_ Dani thinks. Though she trusts Jonas to do the right thing far more than she trusts either Dreylock or Hale. He looks incredibly nervous, though. She heads for the DHD to dial Earth. One of the soldiers cuts her off.

" _We_ will perform the dialing sequence, Dr. Jackson," Commander Hale says.

"Fine, fine," she mutters, stepping back beside Cam.

Another soldier walks up to the DHD, clipboard in hand. He dials slowly, glancing back and forth from the clipboard to the DHD. Hunt-and-peck dialing; Dani hasn't been that slow in years. It's irritating to watch. When the wormhole is established, Ambassador Dreylock uses the special GDO she was given to send the signal: the GDOs they give their offworld allies won't accept multiple codes the way theirs do; they send only one specific code. This one is logged into the SGC's computers as Kelowna's. After a moment, the light on the GDO goes from red to green.

"You may proceed, Mister Quinn," Commander Hale says. "And ... Godspeed."

_You'd think they're sending him off to a Goa'uld throneworld, and not to a planet safer than the one he's leaving,_ Dani thinks irritably. Jonas walks up the steps of the Kelownan Stargate and disappears through the Event Horizon. A moment later, the Event Horizon vanishes as well.

"And now," Commander Hale says, "if you will both surrender your weapons?"

"Oh, hey, now," Cam says. "That doesn't seem very friendly."

"You'll hardly need them here," Ambassador Dreylock says. "Kelowna is a civilized nation. Naturally, they'll be returned to you upon your departure—but you can hardly expect to go walking around looking as if you're intending to initiate hostilities at any moment. And we're prepared to cooperate with you fully."

Dani looks at Cam and shrugs slightly. Unless they want to try to fight their way out of here, it won't make a lot of difference. He nods fractionally.

"Okay," Cam says, unclipping his P90 and handing it over. "But you better be careful with that. If I don't bring it back, they take it out of my pay."

They both hand over their weapons belts. Guns and knives. Cam tells Ambassador Dreylock they need to check in with the SGC in two hours. She says that won't be a problem.

So far so good.

"What would you like to see first, Colonel Mitchell?" Ambassador Dreylock asks.

He gives her one of his best smiles. "Well, seeing as we're here, why don't we start with information on your air defenses?"

They get into an elevator with Commander Hale and the Ambassador and a couple of soldiers—both carrying rifles (so much for "Kelowna is a civilized nation")—and head slowly upward. With the six of them, the elevator is crowded, and it moves slowly. 

"We trust this is a prelude to a new era of openness between Kelowna and Earth," Ambassador Dreylock says.

_If you survive._

Cam nudges her.

"Certainly we hope for that as well, Ambassador," she says. "I'm sure each of us has much to offer the other. For example, our medical technology—"

"We are interested in your weapons technology," Commander Hale says flatly.

"Well, that's what we're here to talk about," Cam says easily.

So for the next two hours, they get their heads crammed with everything the Kelownans are willing to tell them about their military hardware. They're taken to a large room with windows along one wall and a map of all of Kelowna on the other. It has lighter patches on it here and there, indicating objects had been removed from it. Probably markers indicating placement of military somethings. It's the middle of the afternoon on Kelowna. She can see out over the city. It has an oddly Eastern European look to it, like one of those Communist Bloc cities where Time stopped dead in 1947. Which is roughly the level of Kelowna's technological development. The middle of the room is occupied by a table easily thirty feet long. It's now covered with stacks of blueprints—technical specifications for Kelownan aircraft and other assorted military hardware. From the map, and from the potted lecture Ambassador Dreylock delivers, Dani learns Kelowna is the largest and most technologically-advanced of the planet's three nations, though together, Tirania and the Andarii Federation hold more territory. At the moment, the three nations are at peace—a peace which will last (Dani knows: the lessons of history) exactly so long as Kelowna is the only one of the three with the _naquadriaah_ bomb. 

There are about a dozen people in the room, all military, all of lower rank than Commander Hale, here (Hale says) to explain to Cam exactly what each of these devices can do. It's all meaningless to Dani. Thank god it makes sense to Cam. He interprets for her as much as he can, putting things in the simplest of terms. These are fighter planes. These are bombers. Long range. Short range. Light. Heavy. Even in such simple terms, it doesn't tell her much. What she knows is all of it will be useless as a defense against Anubis. Kelowna has only short-range surface-to-surface missile technology. Basically they're point-and-launch. None of them is large enough to carry one of the _naquadriaah_ bombs. Kelowna's delivery method for the bomb is what Cam calls a "long-range heavy bomber." He says the Kelownans have a strong offensive capability but are weak on defense. Commander Hale looks extremely cross, but agrees. 

Some time during the first hour, Ambassador Dreylock is called away. She doesn't look happy about it, but apparently she has no choice. Dani wishes she could talk to Dreylock privately, try to convince her evacuation is vital, but at the moment, it's more important to be presenting a united front with Cam. At the end of two hours, Cam goes off to make his first check-in with the SGC. She stays behind. The Kelownans want it that way.

Cam comes back ten minutes later. "Everything's fine at home," he says. "Our next check-in's in eight hours."

"Great," she says.

"You look like you could use a cup of coffee."

She gestures at the mug at her elbow. Tea. Apparently it's what the Kelownans drink.

"Hey, Casso," Cam says. Casso is the aide whose supposed to fetch and carry for them. Apparently he doesn't have either a title or a first name; Commander Hale didn't mention them. "You folks got anything stronger than this?" He holds up his own cup.

At first Casso thinks Cam means alcohol; Cam's trying to explain. She digs in her pack and pulls out the coffee she brought.

"This," she says. "It's a beverage from my homeworld. It's similar to what you've served us here; a non-narcotic stimulant drink. If Commander Hale approves, I will show you how it's prepared." It will let her get away from the stifling military atmosphere for a few minutes.

Commander Hale nods as if his neck might crack.

"Great," Cam says. "We'll all have a cup of coffee, and then I'd like to see one of your airfields."

"If you will come with me, Dr. Jackson," Casso says. There's a little kitchenette at the end of the floor. It looks a lot like one on Earth, really. She explains the principles of making drip coffee to Casso, and they rig up a method while the water boils. She offers him a candy bar.

"This comes from another plant that grows in the same area of our planet coffee does. I don't know a lot about your planet, but it's possible that if you grow tea here, you could also grow coffee and cocoa." She unwraps the bar, breaks off a piece, and eats it before handing him the rest. No point in making Casso think she's trying to poison him.

Casso takes the chocolate. He's doubtful at first, but not once he tastes it. It seems to be a universal truth: everyone loves chocolate.

She won't think of Kasuf.

The water boils, the coffee is made. She explains the methods of serving it, and Casso prepares a tray, adding containers of milk and sugar. They return to what she thinks of as the Ready Room, though it probably isn't. Cam is in the middle of a conversation with Commander Hale about numbers and placement of Kelownan aircraft. Hale's already told them the Kelownans have forced the Andarii and the Tiranians to disarm.

"I don't see why I should tell you these things, Colonel. Telling you _what_ sort of technology we possess is one thing—though I was against that as well. Telling you how many craft we have, and where they are—"

"Wherever they are, you need to move them," Dani says, sitting down and taking a cup from the tray. "They'll be useless against Death Gliders. But they may stand some chance against ground forces." Not much of one. A staff weapon will be able to shoot anything the Kelownans have out of the sky. But a chance.

"I understood you were a student of ancient cultures, Dr. Jackson?" Commander Hale says archly.

The other officers gather around the tray Casso has brought. Most of them are willing to try the strange beverage she's brought. One of them pours a cup for Hale and sets it at his side. Protocol.

"Doesn't mean she isn't right," Cam says. "Just about the first thing any _Goa'uld_ does when it shows up somewhere is take out the local population's capacity to fight back. Which means Anubis will target your military installations. Barracks, airfields, missile silos. Whatever you've got."

"Our airfields are well-concealed, Colonel."

"And Anubis has technology you can't even imagine," Dani snaps. "The moment he reaches orbit, he's going to know exactly where your Stargate is. And the location of every ounce of _naquaadah_ and _naquadriaah_ anywhere on the surface of your planet."

"You said you could stop him," Commander Hale says.

"I said we might have a plan that would work," Cam says. Casso served him immediately; a nice gesture. He drains his cup quickly and gets to his feet. "You ready to take that drive?"

Hale hasn't touched his cup. She hangs back behind them long enough to pick it up and gulp it down quickly. No point in wasting it.

#

The last time she was here, they rode in a Kelownan vehicle briefly; a closed van that took them from the Museum to the Ministry of Government.

Four years ago. A lifetime.

This time the vehicle waiting for them on the street below looks a little more like a car. Six wheels instead of four. Open cockpit for the driver, and a closed compartment for them. There's a kind of platform on the back for soldiers to stand. A third one rides in front with the driver. She doesn't really like the idea of driving however many kilometers away from the Stargate, but it hardly matters where they are if-and-when Anubis shows up. The first thing he'll do is dial in to keep anyone from leaving.

Despite the size of the vehicle, the interior isn't all that large. There are two bench seats facing each other. She and Cam take the ones facing the driver. She sets her pack on the floor in front of her; she has no intention of leaving it anywhere. Ambassador Dreylock joins them at the last moment, running down the steps and jerking open the door.

"You should have told me you'd be leaving the Ministry, Commander," she says, settling herself into the compartment. 

"It was a spur of the moment decision," Hale says. He taps the window behind him, and the engine starts. The car pulls away from the curb.

"Colonel? Have you come to any conclusions?" Dreylock says brightly.

Everything on the road pulls off to the side at the sight of their vehicle, and the driver is taking full advantage of that. Dani estimates he's going at least sixty miles an hour. Neither Dreylock nor Hale seem to think this is unusual. They've already reached the city limits, and when they get out onto the open road, the driver goes even faster. Outside the city itself, Dani sees what looks pretty much like farmland anywhere. A few buildings in the distance. Trees on the horizonline. Could be almost anywhere. 

"Oh, Commander Hale's been pretty helpful," Cam says noncommittally. "He doesn't seem to know too much about your stockpile of _naquadriaah_ devices, though."

Hale and Dreylock exchange looks.

"I'm not sure why that would be of any interest to you, Colonel. We have agreed those weapons are not to be used. It's the basis of our peace accord with Tirania and the Andarii Federation."

Dani takes a deep breath. Cam pats her knee.

"Oh, sure, sure. You aren't going to use them against each other," Cam says agreeably. "But we kinda figured the whole idea here would be to find some way of using them against the _Goa'uld_."

Hale looks interested. Dreylock looks horrified. "If we detonate one of our _naquadriaah_ devices anywhere on the surface of Kelowna, Tirania and the Andarii Federation will know within the day. They'll begin to re-arm immediately."

"Wasn't suggesting you do it down here. That wouldn't even slow him down. No, I figure we take one of them to him, if we can. Assuming you've got anything that'll make a big enough dent in a _ha'tak_."

"And just how big is this ... 'Hat-Ak'?" Commander Hale asks.

"About the size of that city we just left," Dani says.

Hale says he'll need authorization from First Minister Velis to release any information about their _naquadriaah_ devices, but he still wants Cam to tell him all about how Cam intends to use one against Anubis. To her amazement, Cam seems perfectly willing to explain almost every detail of their plan: attach the biggest _naquadriaah_ bomb the Kelownans have to one of their Earth interceptor craft, fly it up to Anubis's ship, drop the bomb on him.

"And one of our own planes could not do this?" Commander Hale asks suspiciously.

"Well, the 302 can fly a little bit higher and faster than what you've currently got, Commander," Cam says. "It's what we call a near-space fighter-interceptor. Rated for air and space combat both, so it'll be able to reach Anubis's ship in orbit."

Commander Hale's eyes gleam. "We would certainly be interested in purchasing some of these craft."

_I just bet you would_ , Dani thinks sourly.

"Well, that's hardly up to me," Cam says. "The first thing we need to know is whether you folks have something that'll do the job. If you do, we'll bring one of our 302s here and wait for Anubis to show up. Then we attack."

"I'm sure you won't object to allowing one of my officers to fly the craft," Commander Hale says, after a moment.

Cam looks at him, eyebrows raised. "Commander, I _know_ you know how long it takes to train a combat pilot," he says quietly. "We're only going to get one shot at this, and it's a long shot as it is."

Hale shuts up pretty thoroughly after that.

"What do you suggest we do to prepare for this ... potential invasion?" Ambassador Dreylock says. Either she's looking to score points of Hale (still), or the enormity of the situation is finally starting to sink in.

Cam glances at her. Her turn.

"If you won't take my advice and evacuate your people offworld while there's still time, Ambassador, I'd suggest you move as many of them out of your cities as you can. Warn Tirania and the Andarii as well, because I don't think Anubis is going to play favorites. As we've said before, the typical _Goa'uld_ attack pattern is to destroy several major cities from orbit—as a show of force—before calling for the surrender of the planetary population. Anything they recognize as a weapons center or defense installation will also be targeted."

Dreylock looks a little stunned. Finally. "And then?"

"Once you surrender, they land troops in force. In Anubis's case, it could be either Jaffa or Kull Warriors. Either way, they'll move through your population eliminating all resistance, and securing ... whatever their objective is. In this case, your _naquadriaah_. You're fortunate, in the sense that a portion of your population will be left alive to work the mines."

_"Fortunate?"_ Ambassador Dreylock says.

"If he didn't have any use for you, he'd simply destroy the entire planet."

"But you've stopped these creatures before?" she says.

"We've killed a few," Cam says. Leaving out the most important detail: _never in a situation like this._ But they're walking a fine line here. Scare the Kelownans enough to make them _listen,_ and not so much that they simply panic.

"But surely—if we reason with him—" Ambassador Dreylock says.

"You can't reason with a _Goa'uld_ ," Dani says. "You can't bargain with one, you can't bribe them, you can't make deals with them. They consider humans _cattle_. Your world was once ruled by a _Goa'uld_ , Thanos, and that means your ancestors were brought from my planet, thousands of years ago, as slaves to serve him. You were lucky: his experiments with _naquadriaah_ either made him leave, or killed him, and no other _Goa'uld_ came to take his place. If one had, you would never have been allowed to develop any level of civilization beyond the most primitive. You would be living out your— _short_ —lives worshipping your _Goa'uld_ master as a god. And if Anubis conquers Kelowna, you still will be."

"Yet somehow you of Earth have escaped this terrible fate," Commander Hale says suspiciously.

She shakes her head. "No. We were also once ruled by the _Goa'uld_. Thousands of years ago, his human slaves rose up against him, and he fled. To conceal his shame, he obliterated the name of our planet from all _Goa'uld_ records, so we, too, were able to evolve and advance, just as you have. About ten years ago, we rediscovered our Stargate. We've been fighting the _Goa'uld_ ever since."

She thinks she might have to explain the _Goa'uld_ /Asgard Protected Planets Treaty next, but fortunately, they've arrived. Everyone gets out of the car. Hale goes off to "communicate with his superiors." Dreylock looks torn.

"Bet you want to go make a phone call, too," Cam says. "We'll wait right here." Dreylock gives him a hesitant smile and hurries off after Hale. "The two of them trust each other about as far as I can toss a piano," Cam says, gazing after her. "Nice speech."

"I can give it in my sleep. Twenty bucks says it's useless. They won't evacuate. And they probably won't tell us anything about their bombs, either."

"Please. ' _Naquadriaah_ devices.' Hey, let's make this more interesting. If I win—and they do evacuate—you get some sleep when we go back."

She pushes up her glasses and rubs her eyes. What time is it back on Earth? She doesn't dare look at her watch. "I'll lie down," she says. She isn't going to lose, anyway.

"I'll take it."

"And if you lose?"

"A forfeit to be named later. I'm sure you'll think of something." They'll probably both lose, and he won't have to pay up anyway, because they'll both be dead.

Cam is looking around. "Think this'll do," he says.

"For what?"

"Gotta land those ships somewhere, baby. And you need a little bit of space to take off in, you're flying a 302."

"If you don't watch it every minute, Commander Hale's going to steal the spark plugs," she says, and Cam laughs.

"Figure I'll just make Teal'c sleep under her."

#

Ambassador Dreylock comes back first, looking triumphant. "I've spoken to First Minister Velis," she says. "He's agreed to move all non-essential personnel out of the city for the next forty-eight hours. We're saying it's a preparedness drill, in order to avoid panic."

"What about your other cities?" Dani asks.

"Oh, this is the largest one," Dreylock says airily. "You said he'd only target _major_ population centers. If we evacuate every city in Kelowna, it could cause problems in meeting production quotas."

Dani closes her eyes. _What part of "bombardment from space" didn't you understand, you idiot bitch?_

"What about telling the neighbors?" Cam asks.

"The First Minister feels that would be premature at this time," Dreylock says primly.

"So. Can we take a turn around the place? Or do we have to wait for the Commander?" Cam asks.

"Oh, I would be more than happy to escort you, Colonel Mitchell," Ambassador Dreylock says. (Yeah, Dani just bets she would. And around a Kelownan airfield is probably not where Dreylock would like to escort him, either.)

They walk down the runway (she supposes that's what it is). The soldiers stayed with the car when Hale left, of course, but when Cam and Dreylock (and Dani) go walking off, they scramble away from their positions and follow, a ragged parade. There are a couple of planes parked in open hangars, a few others out in the weather. Cam spends just as much time admiring them as if they were the most advanced technology there was. Soon he's surrounded by a group of Kelownan —soldiers? —pilots? —mechanics? from the base, and they're all chatting away as cheerfully about things incomprehensible to Dani as if the world weren't about to end. She knows her place in the order of things, though. She does her best to look interested and keeps quiet. Watching body language. She's pretty sure Hale's been holding a lot back, and Dreylock hasn't been entirely honest either, but none of these men are lying to Cam at all. She wishes she could have gotten Jonas alone for just half an hour. She hopes Sammy has thought to ask him the right questions. Sometimes Sammy focuses a little too much.

When Commander Hale shows up, the pilots-or-mechanics fade away as unobtrusively as if they'd never been there in the first place. The difference, Dani supposes, between the presence of an Ambassador and the presence of an officer.

"I see Ambassador Dreylock has been keeping you occupied," Hale says. _Oh, no, not much love lost there_.

"She gave me the five-cent tour," Cam says cheerfully. "You've got some great little aircraft here. Bet they're really something up there." He glances skyward.

"Would you care to take one up, Colonel?" Commander Hale asks.

"If we had the time," Cam says regretfully. "I'm thinking, though, this would be a good place to land our own ships, if that's all right with you. If we can work out the rest of the details."

"Of course, Colonel." (She wishes she could figure out what Hale is _thinking_ , because she knows it's something, and something not very good.) "But undoubtedly you're eager to be placed in possession of the details of our entire weapons program. First Minister Velis has ordered you be given all possible cooperation. For the moment."

"I don't really need all the details, Commander," Cam says. "I just need to know what the biggest deliverable _naquadriaah_ device you've built is, and how soon you can get it here."

The Kelownans are no different from anyone else. No different from Earth. Despite the fact they've already won their war, they've gone on building bigger bombs. The largest one in their current stockpile is something they can't even test—their scientists are pretty sure it would wipe out all life on the planet. Why build something like that at all? Isn't the point of a war for one side to _win?_

"That sounds like exactly what I'm looking for," Cam says, smiling.

"I'm not sure it will be of any use to you, Colonel," Hale says. "It's far too large to be carried by any conventional aircraft."

"Well, the 302 is kind of ... unconventional," Cam says. Still smiling. "How long?"

"At least a day," Hale says.

"Okay," Cam says. "Good."

Not good. It's already been almost forty-eight hours since Abydos. Vala said Anubis was coming here next. There's no reason for him to delay. Did she lie? Was she wrong?

Cam claps Hale on the shoulder, and tells him to get right on that. And he—Cam—will make arrangements to get their special defense equipment brought out from Earth.

Hale goes off to make the call.

"I see you are a man of action, Colonel," Ambassador Dreylock says. The woman is actually _purring._ Dani folds her arms across her ribs and drops her chin to her chest.

"It's not like we've really got a lot of time to spare," Cam says. "Our intel is two days old. If you've got any pull with the First Minister, I suggest you use it to get him to order the Commander to scatter his forces. Bunched up this way, they're sitting ducks."

"'Sitting ... ducks?'"

"Ah… real easy targets."

"I see. I shall certainly speak to the First Minister the moment we return. And I hope you will join me for dinner tonight, Colonel. So we may discuss future closeness between our two worlds."

"We'd love to," Cam says, cheerfully missing her point entirely.

Hale returns, and the trip back to the city is passed far more silently than the voyage outward. When they reach the Ministry, Cam asks about sleeping accommodations, explaining it's the middle of the night on Earth.

Dani stares at him. _I won,_ he mouths silently.

He didn't. They're only partially-evacuating one city.

But Hale and Dreylock are already arguing (again). Hale wants to quarter them in the Defense Ministry; Dreylock wants to put them in the Ministry of Government. It's on the other side of the city.

"Hate to say it," Cam says, "but it would probably be more convenient for everybody if we stayed here. We're going to need access to the Stargate to make our check-ins, and actually, I'm going to need to make a call right now, if you don't mind."

"For what purpose?" Commander Hale asks.

"Need to let Colonel Carter know you folks have what we need, so—assuming everything's worked out at her end—she can come ahead with what we need to deliver it." Cam has infinite patience, Dani's decided. At this point, she would simply have hit the man, but Cam answers him with unwavering cheerfulness.

"Very well," Hale says.

Back down to the Stargate. This time she's let to go, too. There's a short wait while Sammy is summoned to the Control Room. How long have they been here? About four hours now, she thinks.

"Cam! Good to hear your voice," Sammy says.

"Good to hear yours too," Cam says. "How's everything going there?"

"The modifications should be finished in a few more hours. You?" They all know they can't talk freely.

"The Kelownans think they have what we need," Cam says.

Dani hears Sammy laugh. "According to the material Jonas brought us, I think they do, too. The power of this element is... well, it's almost inconceivable. It's almost a thousand times more powerful than _naquaadah_." 

"Then it ought to make a nice big bang," Cam says. "How soon can you get here?"

There's a moment of silence; Dani knows Sammy's thinking.

"Teal'c estimates we should be there approximately twenty hours from now. We can leave as soon as I'm done here."

"Don't dawdle," Cam says. "We've got a landing site all picked out, and we'll be giving you a signal to home in on for your landing. We'll make our regular check-in six hours from now."

"Right. I'm hoping we'll be on our way by then. Stargate Command out."

It's out of their hands now. Twenty hours until Sammy and Teal'c get here. A little more than that, maybe, until the bomb—the _device_ —arrives. They can only pray Anubis waits that long.

He doesn't.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anubis blows up Abydos, and Dani takes that about as well as you'd expect.


	7. JULY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 goes to Kelowna, and a good time is had by practically nobody. Jonas is awesome. So is Cam. Dani has a nice chat with Simon Gardner. This chapter passes the Bechdel Test. Angst. So much angst. Cam is a Wormhole: X-Treme! fan. Dani has a birthday. Cam has an anniversary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter specific warnings.

"Something's right behind us," is Sammy's first message when the _tel'tak_ drops out of hyperspace. They're back out at the airfield again. Waiting. It's the middle of the following afternoon. The day is grey and overcast.

"We copy, Sam," is Cam's only reply.

The warhead's still an hour away, and Hale says they're moving it recklessly fast. Cam turns to Commander Hale.

"If you don't get that thing here _now,_ we are not going to need it," he says. "Anubis is here."

Hale sets his jaw. Dani thinks he didn't believe—until just now—the enemy was coming. An aide comes running across the tarmac toward them. "Commander!"

"He's about to tell you someone just dialed in to your Stargate," Dani says, doing her best not to sound as murderously snarky as she feels.

Hale flashes her a deadly look and walks toward his man. They speak, and Hale glances back at her. From the look he gives her, she's knows she's right. The two of them run into the building; Hale's set up a secondary command center here. She hopes to hell he's going to give some kind of order to get that bomb here faster. Somehow. She feels a sudden rush of wind, and there's a shimmer in the air as the _tel'tak_ de-cloaks a few yards away. It's hovering twenty feet above the tarmac; it's got the 302 slung beneath it. The soldiers—there are soldiers everywhere; she's almost stopped seeing them by now—point their weapons.

"Wait! Wait! This one's ours!" Cam shouts.

The _tel'tak_ bobs, dips, releases the magnetic grapple. The 302 drops the last foot to the ground with a loud thud, and Cam winces. The _tel'tak_ raises off and settles behind it. The hatch opens, and Sammy, Teal'c, and Jonas exit. Jonas looks wide-eyed and stunned. His first trip into space.

"We don't have much time. Where's the bomb?" Sammy says.

"Not here yet," Cam says.

Sammy stares at him in disbelief. "I still have to interface it with the phase generator, set the timer, set the detonator--"

"None of that's gonna get it here any faster, Sam," Cam says quietly.

Commander Hale returns. "I've instructed the driver to disregard all safety precautions and come at the fastest possible speed."

"How long?" Cam says.

"Perhaps half an hour."

Sammy shakes her head. "Not good enough. Where is it right now?"

Commander Hale points. "It's being brought by truck. The access road lies in that direction."

"Right," Sammy says grimly. "Come on, Teal'c. We're making a pick up. Cam, you'd better get your ride under cover."

Cam nods. The airfield—the closest one to the city—has been evacuated, its craft scattered across the surrounding fields and covered with camouflage netting (which won't help). He climbs into the cockpit of the 302 as Sammy and Teal'c return to the _tel'tak_. Both ships rise from the tarmac simultaneously, but while the _tel'tak_ is nearly silent, the 302 is not. Commander Hale winces at the unfamiliar noise.

"Where are they going?" Commander Hale demands, as the _tel'tak_ vanishes into the sky. The 302 bumbles gently into the empty hangar. It would hold two or three Kelownan craft—she saw them there before. The 302 nearly fills the space by itself.

"To get the bomb you couldn't be bothered to get here fast enough," Dani snaps. There's a tearing sound in the air above, and she looks up. Death Gliders. Hale is looking too. "Those are Anubis's advance scouts," she says. "Think you can take them?" 

The Death Gliders are already out of sight.

Less than ten minutes later, the _tel'tak_ returns. There's an enormous torpedo-looking thing slung underneath. The Kelownan Doomsday Bomb. Once it's on the ground, Teal'c cloaks the _tel'tak_ immediately. Even if the Death Gliders don't have orders to fire just yet, they'd certainly fire on a target like this. Sammy and Teal'c walk out of the ship. Sammy's carrying a tool-case this time. A large one.

"It looks like Anubis is here by himself," Sammy says, setting down her case and opening the casing on the bomb. "But he's brought a full complement of _al'kesh_ and Gliders. It's going to be tough to get at him."

"You let me worry about that," Cam says steadily. "You just get this ready to go."

"From the material Jonas brought, Kelownan devices use a pressure trigger," Sammy says. "I need to disable that and replace it with a timing device. Fortunately, Jonas brought very detailed schematics."

It occurs to Dani suddenly they're all standing around watching Sammy work on a bomb that could blow up the entire planet. And that's actually slightly less worrying than the fact Anubis is already in orbit.

"I brought your gear," Sammy says to Cam. "You and Teal'c better get suited up."

"Think I'll fly this one solo," Cam says. "You'll need Teal'c to fly the other ship, anyway."

The unspoken implication is plain: if he fails, if he succeeds but dies, if something happens they haven't planned for, the three of them will be somewhere safer than the planet's surface. They'll have a chance, at least.

Sammy pauses for a moment, then nods. "Fine."

Cam walks into the _tel'tak_ —the hatch is visible, nothing else—to change.

 _Al'kesh_ in the sky now. Flashes on the horizon. It's started.

Hale starts toward them. She moves to intercept him. "Commander?"

"I've just received word from the Ministry. Tirania and the Andarii Federation both report massive destruction. Entire cities have been obliterated. They're blaming Kelowna."

"It would be nice if you'd warned them."

"Dr. Jackson--"

"Commander Hale. You've had over a day to prepare for this, and if you'd told your neighbors what was coming, they wouldn't be blaming you now. I'm guessing the only sources of _naquadriaah_ are in Kelowna, so Anubis is hitting Tirania and the Federation first as his show of force."

Hale doesn't say anything, and she knows she's guessed right. The Stargate was in Kelowna; Thanatos would have put it close to the ancient mines.

"What can we possibly do?"

"Are you actually asking for my advice?"

He looks at her, and for the first time, the man really looks terrified. The military dinosaur has finally met an older and more vicious predator.

"Don't resist," she says. "You don't have anything that can possibly stop him. If you fight back, it will just be worse for you. Let us do what we came here to do." _If we fail, you can fight back then._ She thinks the words but doesn't say them. Anubis will probably kill them all if they resist. It's better than life under _Goa'uld_ rule, but it's still suicide. Tough call.

"But--" Hale is shaking his head. Out of his depth.

"The _Goa'uld_ are basically cowards," she says, hoping to god she's telling the truth. "If you can hit them hard enough, they retreat. That's what we're hoping for."

"Done," Sammy says, closing the casing. 

Dani turns around. Cam has come out of the _tel'tak_ wearing his flightsuit. His helmet is under his arm. Sammy is still talking.

"The timers are linked. The phase generator should activate for thirty seconds—long enough to get through the shields and possibly into the hull of the ship. When it cycles off, the device will detonate. I'm going to have to start the clock now, though. What shall I set it for?"

"Considering everything, I'd say fifteen minutes sounds like a nice round number," Cam says. His voice is even. Level. Nothing Southern in it now. "Might take me a couple of tries to latch on to this thing."

"Don't take too long," Sammy warns. She clamps a box to the side of the bomb. It lights up immediately. She punches in numbers. It flashes. "And ... mark," she says, as the numbers begin swirling backward. "Godspeed, Cam."

He's already running for the 302.

Despite what he said, the 302 collects the bomb on the first try. Sammy's tense, her mouth clamped into a tight line, and from that Dani knows all the things Sammy didn't bother to say because there was no point: the Kelownan bomb is as volatile as nitroglycerin, her mechanisms are a hasty jury-rig, if Cam bumps it too hard, there's every chance the thing could go off right here.

But it doesn't.

The 302 floats gently out of the hangar and hovers over the bomb. There's a moment of indecision, then the bomb leaps up off the tarmac to land against the bottom of the 302 with a dull echoing clang—electromagnetic grapple—and everyone winces, Sammy most of all. The 302 bobs in the air and seems to strain a bit—probably just as well Teal'c isn't on board—then the engines kick in and the craft vanishes into the sky.

They wait until he's airborne, because it's not impossible Hale might do something insane at the last minute. Teal'c is armed, though, and fortunately (even now) the Kelownans don't recognize a zat as a weapon. The moment he's gone, the three of them turn and head toward the _tel'tak_.

"I will accompany you," Commander Hale says.

"Indeed you will not," Teal'c says. "Your place is here, among your people."

If Hale argues any further, Dani doesn't hear it. She's already running for the ship.

They get into space. Cloaked, but the only thing that's really protecting them at the moment is that Anubis's attention is on the planet below. His ship is surrounded by tiny flecks of light: Death Gliders. Occasionally a beam of light flicks out from it. Another Kelownan (Andarii, Tiranian) city gone.

"There's Cam," Sammy says. Not pointing out the window—they couldn't tell the 302 from the Gliders at this distance—but at the sensor tank. "Eight minutes." Till the bomb goes off, she knows Sammy means.

And at first Dani thinks everything's going okay—as okay as it can be—but Teal'c tenses up, and Sammy's leaning forward, and then Sammy's saying, "Why isn't he closing? He can't hang back like that! They'll cut him to pieces!"

And she looks, and the blue triangle of the 302 is still a long distance away from the red diamond of the _ha'tak_ , and the yellow pyramids of the Gliders are starting to surround it.

"Now, _now,_ Cam, Cam, get _moving--_ " And Sammy isn't talking to herself any more. She's on the radio. And the blue triangle still hasn't changed position.

Dani looks out the window. In the distance, she can see flashes of fire. They're shooting at him.

"Oh god," Sammy says despairingly. And now she's shouting into the radio— _Cam, listen to me!_ —and slamming her hands over the controls, hoping the reason he isn't is because there's something wrong with their communications systems, because he just can't hear her, and the clock is ticking down and Dani knows it's not the communications systems that're broken.

It's Cam.

Fifteen hours waiting to die in a metal coffin in the Antarctic ice. He hasn't been in combat since. Not in a ship.

Took a ground assignment rather than fly again.

Flew on Tegalus. That was an emergency. Nobody was shooting at him there.

She knows what she has to do.

She can't. She has to.

"Mitchell! Now we know why you're the only Snakeskinner who lived! Guess I know who's the real loser now! Cam!" 

Sammy's head whips toward her when Dani screams out the words over the radio. She looks at her as if she's gone insane, and Dani spreads her hands, shaking, feeling sick. She did it deliberately this time. Called him a coward and as much as said he let Heliotrope Flight die in his place. There's no apology possible. But maybe—just maybe—he'll still be alive to hate her. 

"The ship is moving," Teal'c says.

"He's starting his attack run," Sammy whispers.

"How--?" _How long?_

"Three minutes," Sammy says grimly.

They can see enough—just barely—to piece together the rest.

He's good. He's better than good. The average Jaffa lifespan is approximately one hundred fifty years. Jaffa pilots train for _decades_. Cam out-flies them all. The Death Gliders crash into each other. They crash into the _ha'tak_. The 302 is untouched. It reaches the mothership. The two images merge in the tank.

"Payload away." Cam's voice, over the radio. He sounds eerily calm, as if he's gone _beyond_ fear and out the other side.

"Get out of there!" Sammy urges.

"Copy, Flight," Cam says.

Then silence again, and they hold their breaths. Ten seconds. Twenty. And a light on the horizon. Bright. Blinding. The _tel'tak's_ shields automatically darken in response.

"Did we--" she asks.

"The _ha'tak_ has jumped to hyperspace," Teal'c announces. " _Al'kesh_ and Death Gliders are retreating from the planet's surface. I have Colonel Mitchell's craft on sensors. He has survived."

She isn't sure whether to feel grateful or disappointed or just stunned. All three, probably.

Teal'c takes them back to the airfield.

#

He lands the 302 beside the _tel'tak_. It's several seconds before he can make his hands stop shaking enough to hit the canopy release. Now that the battle's over, the adrenaline has no place to go.

Down and safe.

The other three are standing beside the cargo ship, waiting for him. It's another minute or so before he can get himself unbuckled and levered up out of his seat. He drops his flight helmet inside the cockpit; he wants to feel real air on his face. His muscles feel like cooked spaghetti, and he slides down off the wing, staggering as his boots hit the ground.

Sam is running across the tarmac toward him; Little Miss is right behind her. Sam reaches him first, hugging him hard enough to crack ribs, and he starts to feel real again, hugging her back.

 _"Cam,"_ she says in his ear, and it's love and relief and exasperation all in one. Made it through. Dodged the bullet. He hugs her harder for just a moment, then lets her go. And Little Miss flings herself at him—as much a full-body tackle as a hug—and wraps her arms around him and buries her face in his neck and says, _"Cameron Mitchell,"_ and it's anger and desperation and confusion and he thinks about the gates of Hell. Pretty sure she'd walk right through them to drag him out. To drag any of them out. He could probably kiss her right this minute and get kissed back. But right now they're all higher than kites, drunk on adrenaline and the fact they're all still alive. And she'd hate both of them when she came to her senses.

So instead he says, "I should probably turn you over my knee for what you said." He knows why she did it, but it still hurts. Not as much as thinking she didn't know what she was saying. She knew exactly what she was doing.

But she pushes herself away from him and steps back, and Teal'c says: "I believe that would be unwise to attempt." And Cam shakes his head and forces a smile.

He's so _tired._

There's smoke in the air. "Sam?" he says.

"Anubis fired at the city before he jumped for hyperspace," she says. She shrugs slightly. "Some of it's still there."

And now they've got to deal with Hale and the rest of the Kelownans and all he really wants to do is _sleep for a week._

"C'mon," Sam says, "let's get you checked out." She walks him back to the _tel'tak_ and over her shoulder he sees Hale heading toward them and Teal'c and Little Miss going off to run interference. He could almost pity Hale. His team. At this moment, there aren't three people on God's green Earth he loves more.

"What happened up there?" Sam asks. He's trying to get the suit off, but his hands aren't cooperating. She pushes them out of the way and does it herself.

"I just..." 

She isn't talking about the battle. Not as such. And oh God, he's seen it happen to other guys. It's the dirty little secret nobody wants to talk about. Two things a pilot can lose: nerves, and _nerve._ The reflexes go; there's no shame in that. Losing your nerve, well, everyone says there's no shame in that, either. He'd never wanted to know for sure. That's why he turned down the chance to lead Blue Flight against the satellite on their first approach to Tegalus when Pendergast offered. He'd said it wasn't fair to take a seat away from one of _Prometheus's_ pilots. The second time it'd only seemed right for him and Teal'c to be the ones to fly against the satellite. Just a bag and tag. Fish in a barrel. And he'd been fine. Shuttling back and forth between Caledonia and Rand a couple of times, that'd been fine, too. And he'd figured: _dodged a bullet, there, Shaft,_ and hadn't thought this would be any different. Until he got up there, and saw those Death Gliders coming at him from all directions, and suddenly it was Antarctica all over again. _The screams of the dying in his earphones, the sudden silences on the tac channel, and nowhere to go._

"Cam?"

"M'okay," he mutters.

"You're not," Sam says. "But you're alive. And we're all still here." She hugs him again, and he holds on to her very tightly, because she's warm and alive and nothing like ice and darkness and feeling yourself slowly bleeding to death in the cold.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah." He lets go of her and stands to peel out of his flightsuit. She's already pulling out a clean set of BDUs from somewhere.

"Want a sandwich?" Sam asks.

"You pack the kitchen sink?"

"This and that," she says. 

He pulls on his BDUs and sits down to put on his boots. "What now?"

She shrugs a little. "We go home. Hope we've scared Anubis enough he'll lie low for a while. Hope the Kelownans are smart enough to realize we actually saved their asses and grateful enough to open a trading partnership with us. And trade _naquadriaah_. Jonas actually managed to smuggle a sample of it to us along with all of those documents. I don't know how he did it, but I could just kiss him. Cam, we've _got_ to have it! With _naquadriaah,_ I think we could even give the 302s hyperdrive capability."

"Can't beat that with a stick. I'm guessing it's probably SG-9's problem, though." His voice feels as if it's coming from a thousand miles away.

"Probably," she agrees. There's a pause. "Cam. You're not ... _too_ mad at Dani, are you?"

 _For saying she could see that big streak of yellow up my spine?_ He looks up. Sam looks worried.

"My own fault," he says quietly. "I showed her where the buttons were. I knew she'd push 'em if she thought she had to." Sam starts to say something. He holds up a hand. "Babe, whether or not she was right to do what she did, she's just lost all the family she had left in the world. I'm not going to do anything to make it worse."

#

It's another two days before they can leave Kelowna. Fortunately the Stargate survived intact, and they can check in immediately—if you define immediately as six hours later. Two-thirds of the city is just ... gone, and a lot of the rest is on fire. The loss of life would be far higher if the First Minister hadn't authorized the partial evacuation. As it is, tens of thousands are dead, and that's in this city alone.

Kelowna (the nation) was the most lightly hit. And a number of its major cities simply aren't _there_ any more. As for Tirania and the Andarii Federation... well, Kelowna probably has a true and lasting peace at last. The first pictures from both continents came back about twelve hours after Anubis left. There are craters where most of the large population centers in Tirania and the Federation used to be.

She doesn't see much of Cam and Sammy while they're here. Sammy's doing her best to repair Kelowna's power and communications systems with Cam to watch her back. Dani has Teal'c for her watchdog, and she's in meetings with First Minister Velis and the Kelowna Security Council. Velis is trying to figure out what the hell to tell his people. Dani's suggesting the truth.

"At this point, everyone's seen there are enemies out there, First Minister. Wouldn't it be a good idea to let people know you have allies against them? Tell your people about the Stargate, and about the _Goa'uld_."

"Do you always find truth to be the best policy, Dr. Jackson?" Velis asks.

"I find it to be the simplest. In this case, your entire population has seen alien spaceships, and more than three-quarters of your planet's population is dead, so I think it's the best."

Earth sends help, of course. SG-8. Relief supplies. Engineers. And SG-9, to hammer out the details of a trade agreement between Earth and Kelowna.

Finally, General Landry orders them home. Jonas drives them back to the airfield where their ships wait. The air is still heavy with smoke, though most of the fires are out by now. Halfway across the city, the buildings stop abruptly—as if cut by a knife—at the place where the energy beam struck. The ground there is black and glistening, as flat and even as a dancing floor. They're lucky there's a car available, lucky the road's intact. The car is a personal sedan this time, not a limousine. Teal'c sits up front with Jonas and the three of them crowd into the back.

"I'm grateful for all you've done for us," Jonas says quietly. He's actually the first person to say so.

"I'm sorry we couldn't do more," Cam says.

"We'll rebuild," Jonas says firmly. "I hope, now, as one nation. And I hope you'll come back to visit us."

"I hope you'll visit us, too, Jonas," she says. "I know how much you did for us. We won't forget that."

"Thank you," Jonas says, "but what I did ... it was nothing compared to what you've done. Both times you've visited us, you've saved millions of lives. I only hope someday my people can repay you fully."

She looks out across the countryside—past Cam; she's sitting in the middle. Right here, it looks almost untouched, but she thinks of the pictures she saw. Of Tirania, of the Andarii Peninsula and its islands. Of places she's told were once Kelownan cities. If they'd only been faster, smarter, better. None of that would have happened.

"Just live well, Jonas," she says.

They get to the airfield, and Jonas drives them out to where the ships are parked, still in the middle of the tarmac, just where they left them.

"Aw ... hell," Cam says wearily, getting out of the car.

There are scorch-marks on the hull of the 302 that weren't left by any _Goa'uld_ Death Glider. The canopy's been pried back. Somebody took a crowbar—it looks like—and pried open everything pryable on the outside, too.

"Looks like somebody really wanted to see how it worked," Sammy says neutrally.

"Will it still fly?" Jonas asks uneasily.

 _"No,"_ Cam says. He sounds like he wants to hit something. He walks over to the 302 and leans against it, resting his forehead against the hull.

"Someone needs to tell Commander Hale he's an ungrateful bastard who would be much better off dead," Dani says furiously. "He's responsible for this. And you know what? He didn't even find out anything he could _use._ We risked our goddamned lives to save his fucking planet and he turns around and tries to--"

"Dani." Cam turns away from the 302. "You know we'd do the same thing. Let's go home."

Teal'c keys open the hatch of the _tel'tak_. There are scorch-marks there, too, but orichalcum is much tougher than the thin skin of the 302, and the four of them are the only ones on Kelowna who know the access code. The hatch opens, and they walk inside. Teal'c seals the hatch behind them.

She wants to say she wishes they'd let Kelowna fry (though she doesn't), or that she wishes Commander Hale had died in the attack (and she does wish that), but Cam still has that closed-off look. As if something he loves has been hurt. So she doesn't say either one.

Teal'c gets into the pilot seat and Cam gets into the copilot seat and they lift up. Hover for a moment over the 302. There are holes in the cockpit where instrumentation has been removed. She wishes the Kelownans much joy of figuring it out—it's the most advanced ship Earth has (next to the 303s) and based on _Goa'uld_ designs. Then the _tel'tak's_ magnetic grapnel engages and the 302 lifts up. There's a crunch, and she sees Cam flinch, just a little.

_It's just a ship._

She doesn't say that either.

Then they're heading up, up, up, and this is the part that always makes her dizzy and nervous, until the planet is just a little ball below them, and from here they can see black patches of smoke mixed with white clouds. Then Teal'c sets course for Earth, and they jump to hyperspace, and Kelowna is gone.

A place she'd rather not see again. Like Antarctica, it's unlucky.

#

There's not a lot to do on the trip home. Cam says she and Sammy should take the first rest break. Teal'c says all three of them should take the first rest break, saying he is perfectly capable of watching over the controls by himself, Colonel Mitchell.

So they go.

Sammy packed a lot of gear. Including the thick padded kind of sleeping bags, the ones they never carry on offworld overnights because they're much too heavy to pack. They unroll them (back in the cargo bay) and spread them out. Ungear. The Kelownans even returned their weapons. A nice gesture. (Just about the only nice gesture they made.) She pulls off her glasses and tucks them into their case for safekeeping. Boots off. Into her bag. She's exhausted. She's not sure if she can sleep, but the chance to not be standing up is nice. She can't remember the last time she slept.

"They'll fix her, Cam," she hears Sammy say.

"Sure, sure." He sounds so tired. It isn't fair. Not mad at her, though. Maybe he forgot what she said. Maybe he's forgiven her. She'll take either one. She wriggles down further in her sleeping bag.

She only did it to save his life.

#

The next thing she's aware of is somebody poking her.

She thrashes violently—her instinctive reaction when roused from sleep—but she's completely enmeshed in her sleeping bag. That only makes her struggle harder, until she's actually conscious. She claws her way to the top of the bag and looks out. Blearily.

"Good morning!" Cam announces, with a cheerfulness proportional—she's certain—to her utter lack of clarity. "Didn't want you to miss the landing."

There's a pause of several seconds while she examines his statement, because it makes absolutely no sense. "Landing?"

"Landing," Cam repeats. "It's what you do when you arrive."

It was supposed to take them almost a day to get to Earth. She sits up. "We've gotten to Earth?"

"Well, unless Teal'c took a wrong turn somewhere."

"We've gotten to Earth." Maybe it will make sense if she keeps saying it.

"Baby, you were out like a _light,_ " Cam says. "And wasn't any reason to wake you up. Now c'mon. Get your boots on. Coffee's gonna have to wait till we're down, though."

She drags herself out of her bag. She slept eighteen hours? She fumbles around—glasses, socks, boots, jacket, vest, gunbelt—and once she's dressed (but not really much more awake) goes from the cargo hold to the cockpit. They're only a few hundred feet up, and the sight of the ground rushing up at her shocks her awake faster than any amount of coffee could. It doesn't matter how many times she crosses the galaxy, she hates flying, and she hates heights.

Seconds later they're hovering over the landing strip at Peterson. It's been sealed off and secured for them, just like every other time secret-or-alien ships have landed here. Teal'c cuts the 302 loose—clunk—and then moves off to land the _tel'tak_.

They're home.

They step out onto the landing strip. Hot. Summer. Morning. What day is it? She checks her watch.

July 6th. 

The last day she really remembers was—what? June 30th? Wednesday. And there were supposed to be ... so many things. She even bought Cam a present to celebrate his first anniversary with them. It's sitting at home on her piano right now, wrapped in bright paper and ribbons, and the thought of it makes her wish she was never going to have to walk through her front door again.

There's a crew waiting to fly the two ships back to Area 51. Cam steps aside to have a quiet word with the man in the flightsuit, the man who was supposed to fly the 302. He nods, and Cam comes back to them. There's a van waiting at the foot of the runway to drive them back to the SGC. There's a box of doughnuts and a big thermos of coffee waiting in the back for them. Cups, too. Somebody's being nice. Teal'c doesn't exactly dive on the doughnuts, but close. She goes for the coffee first, waiting (long experience) until the van is up to speed before opening the lid. It's already been adulterated—cream and sugar both—but she'll take what she can get. She fills the cups and passes them around.

It's vile, but it's heaven.

Sammy groans, leaning her head back against the wall of the van. "The first thing I'm doing when I get back is taking a shower. Then breakfast."

"I could eat," Cam agrees. "You?"

"Coffee. Shower." She hooks a doughnut out of the box, not even bothering to choose. She's surprised she's actually hungry, but food service was pretty random on Kelowna after the attack, even in the Ministry of Government, and she didn't eat on the way home. "Breakfast," she says in mild surprise, around a mouthful of doughnut.

"Debriefing," Cam says. "And then, personally, I think we've earned a day off."

She's in the middle of coming up with some excuse, torn between the desire to see some landscape that hasn't been bombed to ash and glass and the need for the isolation and solitude she can—usually—find in her office, when her mind rewinds back to Before Kelowna, to what she was doing before they all dropped everything and went off to save one more world. Sort of. And her mouth drops open and she says:

"Oh my god. _Simon._ "

Sammy looks at her. "'Simon?'"

"I said I had to talk to him and we were already talking to the Kelownans, and Cam said it wasn't a good time for me to go to Chicago and he'd talk to Landry about having Simon come here and did you?" She's talking so fast the words are tumbling over each other, but she's filled with a crawling horror. Simon, yanked out of his daily routine at the Institute to come to Colorado to talk to her, and left cooling his heels for five days because _she wasn't here._

Cam frowns, obviously trying to think back to something that long ago. "Yeah. He said he'd arrange it."

"Oh, god." Maybe he didn't. Maybe Landry was smart enough to put it off until he found out whether she'd survived to talk to him. She buries her face in her hands, pushing her glasses out of the way.

"Baby?" Cam sounds worried.

"You don't understand," she says without moving. "We need his cooperation. I've always gone to him before. If he's been pulled out here—and made to _wait--_ " He'll be impossible to deal with. And having to cope with Simon in a temper is such a small thing compared to everything else, but somehow it's the one thing too much.

"You can tell him you were offworld, right?" Cam says.

She sits up. Sighs. Settles her glasses into place and runs her fingers through her hair. Nothing to do but deal with it. "He won't really care, Cam," she says.

#

Physical, shower, _coffee,_ breakfast, debriefing, and it's not as bad as it could be (she asks immediately): General Landry only sent for Simon Gardner after they checked back in with the SGC post-Anubis, so he arrived in Colorado Springs yesterday. He's not at the Broadmoor, unfortunately (where she would have put him if it had been up to her), but a decent enough hotel downtown.

She tries not to fidget through the briefing. There's a lot to cover, even though, for once, they have SG-9 on the spot to do immediate follow-up. The technical specs on the _naquadriaah_ are impressive. Sammy urges General Landry to obtain more if he possibly can. Immediately. 

Dani tells what she can about the political situation: currently in flux; Tirania and the Andarii Federation nearly wiped out. Kelowna is the _de facto_ surviving political entity on Kelowna, and will (presumably) open its borders to refugees from its former enemies, so recently defeated.

"I've encouraged them to view this as an opportunity to build a lasting peace on their planet, General," she says. "Their essential conflicts seem to have been rooted in nationalism, and, well, there don't seem to be any nations left but Kelowna."

"A rather drastic solution," General Landry says. "What about Anubis? Did we hurt him?"

"He was in good enough shape to run," Cam says. "Too bad we don't have more of those phase generators—and more _naquadriaah_. We might be able to give him a run for his money."

"If we had the _naquadriaah,_ we might not need the phase generators," Sammy says musingly. "Based on my calculations, _naquadriaah_ is powerful enough to allow the 302 to actually enter hyperspace, just as the Death Gliders do. A short-range hyperjump—a hyper-pulse, really—would be enough to take a 302 past a _Goa'uld_ defense shield, allowing it to attack a mothership directly, with _naquadriaah_ armaments. Not as good as a phase generator, but we have slightly more chance of getting our hands on the _naquadriaah_."

General Landry nods. "We'll make it a priority, Colonel Carter. Good work, all of you. Dr. Jackson, I know this has been especially hard on you, in light of your recent, ah, _bereavement_. If you'd like to take some personal time--?"

"No, thank you, General," she says evenly. Is the man an idiot? "I need to go interview Dr. Gardner immediately."

"Very well. Dismissed."

She gets to her feet, going over in her mind what she'll need for the interview. Tape recorder. Liquor. Notepad. Cam catches up to her at the door. "Thought I'd go with you," he says.

She stops. "I'd rather you didn't."

"Really think I should," he says.

She doesn't want to argue with him here. She turns around and walks off. Cam, of course, follows. They end up in her office. Her backpack is in the middle of her worktable. She starts unpacking it. She'll need some of the contents.

"No," she says flatly.

"M'm." She glances up. Cam is leaning against her office doorway, arms crossed. Lounging, actually. "You know, you haven't really given me a good reason yet."

"You haven't given me a good reason why you want to come."

"It's been a rough week," Cam says. "You might need somebody to watch your back."

"He's a _college professor,_ for god's sake. What do you think he's going to do?" God, her pack looks as if it was invaded by monkeys. She's going to need to completely re-do it. She gave away everything the Kelownans could possibly use, and the rest of it is utterly jumbled.

"Former host," Cam points out.

#

He'd cornered Sam for a quick 4-1-1 this morning, because he's seen Little Miss be just about every way she can be—including full-out hysterics—but he's never seen her _panic_ before. And he's pretty sure that's what he saw in the van, when she thought she might have upset Gardner. He knows the basics—former colleague, former host—but he needed details.

"Simon Gardner," he says. Down in Sam's lab, and they've got about five minutes before they're due in the Conference Room.

Sam pulls a face. "You remember Jonas Hansen, right?"

He does. A nasty piece of work Sam got tangled up with back in her Academy days, the sort of fellow who couldn't think well of himself unless he was thinking badly of other people. He'd done a real number on her. Cam raises an eyebrow.

"Well, Simon was Dani's Jonas," Sam finishes. "They were postdocs together at the Oriental Institute. He chose the program because she was in it. The last great love of her life." Sam looks like she's eating slugs. "Turns out what Simon wanted was a research assistant, not a partner. He ridiculed her theories; it was a really bad break-up, and afterward, she went off to Berkeley to become a teaching assistant."

"Him becoming Osiris didn't improve things, I'm guessing."

Sam sighs. "We don't know how much—in the _Goa'uld_ —the host influences the symbiote. If it's anything like the _Tok'ra_ , it would explain Osiris's ... obsession ... with her. It was fortunate, in a way. If he hadn't come after her—here, on Earth—we'd never have been able to capture him, and free Simon."

All of which is a little west of the point. The host remembers. That's why Little Miss wants to talk to her old boyfriend in the first place.

#

"Former host is the _point,_ " she says irritably. "He's not Osiris. He's just ... Simon. He's helped us before."

"Then he really shouldn't object to me being there," Cam says, sounding both reasonable and immovable. "And hey. I might learn something."

She closes her eyes. Her body isn't tired, but something inside her is, and she doesn't know how to rest it. "Is there anything I can say to get you to change your mind?" she asks, and oh god, hearing herself, she sounds as if she's about to cry. If Cam touches her, she thinks she might.

But he stays where he is. "Nope," he says. "I'll stay out of your way," he adds.

"You'd better," she says, gathering what she needs and stuffing it into her pockets. "Simon can be ... temperamental."

#

They change to street clothes. They take her Jeep. She makes a couple of stops on the way to the hotel. A liquor store, where she buys a bottle of port and a bottle of sherry. The tab comes to over a thousand dollars. A specialty store, for sherry biscuits, Belgian chocolates, half a pound of Beluga caviar (and associated serving equipment) and the crackers for the caviar. Almost two thousand there. She expects Cam to make some joke, but he doesn't.

They reach the hotel.

It's one she stays at herself sometimes; that's an irony she could do without right now. She could also do without being recognized; she goes over to one of the lobby courtesy phones instead of to the desk and asks to be put through to Dr. Simon Gardner. Hoping he doesn't let it go to voicemail; if he does, she'll have to go to the desk and show her ID to get his room number. But he picks it up on the third ring.

"What?"

Gracious as ever. "Simon? It's Dani."

"How nice to hear from you. I called when I arrived, of course, but you couldn't be bothered to answer your phone."

She hasn't thought to check her cell for messages. Nearly everyone who has the number had been with her. "I'm sorry. I've been away. I'm in the lobby. May I come up?"

"My time is yours—since apparently I'm under house arrest."

She closes her eyes. Of course they would have told him not to leave the hotel. "Your room number?" she asks. He tells her, and she hangs up the phone. "Let's go," she says to Cam.

They ride up to Simon's floor in silence. They've put him in a suite, at least. Thank god for that. She doubts it's as much out of concern for his comfort as because the suite floor is less fully occupied as a rule. It's more secure.

When they reach their floor, the first thing they see is a man sitting on the courtesy bench facing the elevator. He's—supposedly—reading a newspaper. Just like any other hotel guest wearing an earpiece radio and carrying a gun. Simon's watchdog. He'll ignore them, though. He's only here to keep Simon in.

She goes down the corridor and knocks. After a moment, Simon opens it.

He's barefoot. Open-collared white shirt—French cuffs, folded back—and dark slacks. The pale copper hair is disheveled, as if he's just gotten out of bed, though she knows he hasn't. The glass-green eyes stare at her without favor, then move past her to Cam.

"I see you decided to bring along moral support this time."

"This is Cameron Mitchell. He works with me."

She's sure Cam would offer to shake hands, but his arms are full of bags. She steps forward, and Simon either has to back up or be collided with. This time he backs up, and they walk inside. The sitting room of the suite is done in fake-upscale Hotel American. Couch, two chairs, coffee table. The door to the bedroom is half-open. The bed is still unmade. She takes the bags from Cam and sets them down on the table. Drops her backpack on the floor. Begins to unpack the bags.

"I brought you a few things."

"Bribes?" Simon is pacing. Nervous. Edgy. He knows why they're all here and he hates it. She sympathizes, but she still needs what he knows. Cam sits down in one of the chairs. Out of the way.

"I'm sure I don't need to bribe you to get you to cooperate."

"It might be a nice change." Simon throws himself down on the couch and regards the caviar. "You forgot the vodka."

"We can order some from Room Service."

"Never mind. They don't have my brand. The glasses are over there."

There's a coffee service and a refrigerator here, and several glasses under plastic hoods. She walks over and picks up two. Simon follows her. "What's so important that you had to drag me halfway across the country, darling?"

"I need to ask you what you remember about Osiris's dealings with Anubis."

"Nothing," Simon says. "Too bad."

She walks back to the couch. Sets the glasses on the table. Simon brushes past her and flops down on the couch. He starts opening all the packages—crackers, biscuits, chocolates, caviar—tossing the wrappings indiscriminately around. He sticks a finger into the caviar and licks it clean. "This is good," he says. "You should try it."

"Later. How did Osiris meet Anubis?"

"At a singles night." He's into the chocolates now. Biting into several to decide if he likes them, discarding the half-eaten pieces back into the box. She goes over to the desk and picks up the chair, placing it on the other side of the low table. Picks up her backpack and pulls out her recorder. She can get four hours on this tape. She hopes she won't be here that long, but sessions with Simon can run for hours.

"Port or sherry?" she asks. Simon has always liked sweet wines. She'd hated them. He'd always served them to her anyway, telling her she just needed to give them a chance.

"Why not mix them?"

She opens both bottles. He picks them up, one after the other, and studies the labels. "You always were obvious." He chooses the sherry and pours his glass full. Drinks. "David would have loved this," he says quietly.

"Yes," she says. "He would have." Dr. David Jordan, born and raised in Iowa, the compleat Anglophile, sweetly obsessed with recreating an England that never was. Dickensian Christmases, High Tea, and afternoon sherry parties. Her friend and mentor. _Their_ friend and mentor, until Osiris killed him.

" _Ever_ so sorry I can't be of help," Simon says brightly, putting his glass down. "After I've come all this way. Ta very much and thanks for the drink. Do give me a call the next time you're in town, will you?"

"Osiris was Anubis's most trusted lieutenant. He served him for at least two years that we know of. Anubis chose him to present his petition to the System Lords at their summit meeting--"

"You'll forgive me for stating the obvious, but I was there."

"Yes. The host experiences nearly everything that happens while they're a prisoner of their _Goa'uld_. And Osiris would have wanted to learn everything he could have about Anubis."

"Stating the obvious again, darling."

"I need to know what it was."

"Do you think your _lovely_ Air Force hasn't asked me all these things in great and tedious detail? I've cooperated fully."

"Of course." They both know he hasn't. Quite. "I'm sure you've answered every question they've asked. But I don't think they've been asking you about this."

"I don't remember what you want to know," Simon says. He's leaning forward now, elbows on knees. Sulking.

"We both know that isn't true."

He straightens up, and he's smiling now. There's something a little bit feral in his expression. Predatory. "Give me a kiss, and I'll tell you." The preliminaries are over: Simon wants to play. He might know what she needs and he might not. No way to be sure.

"I'd fuck you blind if you'd tell me," she says. 

When he smiles at her, she sees the snake beneath the skin. Hathor. Seth. Cronos. All of them. "That might not be such an inducement, darling. You were never that good between the sheets."

"And I don't recall you complaining at the time, _Simon_." It will be helpful if they both remember who he is.

"That was before I realized what a useless addlepated delusional little bitch you really were."

"Amazingly, I also happened to be right."

"Mummy and Daddy would be so proud."

She takes a deep breath. She'd never talked about her past to Simon, but it wasn't as if it was a secret. He'd been interested in her enough—once—to look up her parents. "Let's talk about Anubis."

Simon flings himself to his feet. Pacing again. "Anubis was a _Goa'uld_."

" _Is_ a _Goa'uld_ ," she says. "He's still a problem for us."

"No one can look upon his face and live."

Okay. Nothing really new there. He appeared by hologram to President Hayes, so they know what regalia he prefers. And apparently he has a method of (at least under extreme circumstances) moving from host to host that doesn't require direct physical contact. It's how he survived Antarctica (and his lovely SGC vacation).

"He was banished by Ra a thousand years ago. He created the Abomination and took it as a host."

This is something Simon has never mentioned before. "Did he tell—Osiris—what he did?" she asks quietly.

" _Harceisis!_ He made _harceisis!_ " Simon shouts.

She doesn't recognize the word. Maybe Teal'c will. "And Ra banished him," she says.

 _"Yesssss…."_ Simon says. The word comes out as a hiss. "But he came back." He's behind her now. His hands drop to her shoulders. His fingers circle her throat.

"All right," she says calmly.

Simon bends down so his lips are beside her ear. "Osiris was going to take you with him. But you were too clever for him," he whispers.

She's not sure whether Simon's sorry about that or not. She remembers Egypt. The desert. The pain of the ribbon weapon burning into her skull. Jamming the dart into Simon's thigh. She slides her hands up under Simon's. He closes his hands over hers, squeezing tightly for a moment. Then he releases her and steps away.

"And then he left," he says, in conversational tones. "He went back to his throneworld, but it had been taken. Ba'al had taken it."

She knows this already. It was part of the initial debriefing.

"Where could he go? Where was safe?" Simon's back on the couch again. More sherry. "His Jaffa had deserted him. Filthy bastards. Like you. Running out on me."

Actually, Simon was the one who dumped her. "Stick to the point."

"I can't believe I ever called you "pretty." You haven't aged well at all. For that matter."

"It's not the years, it's the mileage." Oh, god. She can't believe she's quoting that _movie._

"You certainly racked up a lot of them. Fucked your way into four degrees, but you never could fool me. I knew you were nothing but a second-rate crackpot. Oh, god, you were so pathetic. _'Oh, Simon, yes, my love. And we'll get married and have fat babies and a lovely life together.'_ Digging up alien spaceships. How charming."

"Entertaining as this all is, I'm actually running out of patience. We'll accept as givens that I'm ugly and stupid. Do I go on to threats now?"

"What do you expect to threaten me with, Danielle?"

She thinks she must know what an exorcist feels like, watching Simon be all these different people in turn. "The strong possibility that if you can't give me something I can use, I'm Anubis's next host. He'll know everything I know. Including where to find you." They both know what the _Goa'uld_ do to former hosts.

"I don't know anything!"

She gets up from the chair and goes to sit beside him on the couch. He clings to her, pressing his face against her neck. He's shaking. Across the room, she meets Cam's eyes for the first time. It's a shock: she'd almost forgotten he was here. His gaze is steady, his face is calm. She tries to draw strength from that. They have a long way to go. She strokes Simon's hair. "Osiris met Anubis," she prompts gently.

It takes hours to wear Simon down, to make him _focus_ for more than a few seconds at a time. Cam doesn't move once. But finally she has what she thinks she needs. Information about Anubis's bases—as much as Osiris knew.

Information about other things, too.

"He's different than the others," Simon says, at the very end. "I saw him take a host once. He showed me to punish me. He took them so often. They died. He couldn't use the sarcophagus any more. He burned them out—from inside—days, weeks—he'd take a new one. He flowed out like smoke. He told me he'd been to the Higher Realms and gained such power as to humble even the Asgard. He said he'd remake all Creation in his image. We were both afraid." Simon was terrified. And Osiris was afraid, too. That's clear. "I'm tired, Dani," he mutters, nuzzling her cheek, groping her breasts. "I'm tired."

"Come on, Simon," she says. "Let's go to bed." She gets to her feet, gets his arm around her shoulders, and lifts him to his feet. He's a good bit taller than she is, but she's had years of experience moving exhausted—wounded—dying—men around. They stumble toward the bedroom, and she sits him on the edge of the tumbled bed and undresses him.

"Stay with me," he begs, grabbing her wrist.

"Until you're asleep."

He lies down and she covers him up. Shakes out slacks and shirt and underwear and lays them over a chair. Checks the room, finds his pills in the bathroom and puts them on the bedside table with a glass of water. Comes back to the bed. He's already asleep.

She makes sure there's plenty of light in the room—it's already twilight outside, and it will be dark soon, and Simon doesn't sleep in a dark room any more—and goes back out into the other room, closing the bedroom door. Cam is getting to his feet. He looks troubled. Small wonder. "Are you all right?" he asks quietly.

"What do you expect?" she snaps, taking care to keep her voice low. "He was a host for two years." And Osiris was one of the worst of them.

Skaara was a host for longer. Skaara went home and was happy. Skaara's dead now.

And Jack loved Skaara, and Skaara's death isn't only loss, bereavement, it's _failure_ on some scale she can't even measure. She picks up her recorder and drops it into her knapsack.

"Ready to go?" Cam asks.

"Fine."

They walk out of the room, and down the corridor, and into the elevator. The busy evening lobby seems like another world. One filled with normal people, and sanity. She staggers, just a bit, and Cam puts an arm around her shoulders to steady her. "Why don't we go get something to eat?" he says.

"Aren't you going to try to take me home and _feed me_?" she snarls, because oh, god, she wants to hurt someone right now. Anyone.

"I'd suggest it if I thought it'd get me anywhere," Cam says. Still quiet. Unwilling to be drawn.

"I'm going home," she says. If she can't hurt anyone else tonight, she can at least hurt herself.

"Sure, sure," Cam says. "Home it is." And they walk back to the parking garage, and find where she parked the Jeep, and Cam plucks the keys out of her hand as she goes to open the door. "Why'n't you let me drive?" he says. "You've had a rough day."

And she wants to hit him, or scream, and if she does either one, she knows she just won't stop. So she walks around and gets into the passenger side. Silently. And Cam drives down the ramp and pays the parking charge and then they're out in traffic. Tuesday evening, a little after seven; rush hour's pretty much over, and the dinner and nightlife crowd hasn't come out yet. The traffic's fairly light.

"He wasn't always like that," she says, after a few minutes. (Though—if you knew him before—you can see the bones of the old Simon still there in what he is now, like the foundations of an ancient city.)

"Wouldn't think so," Cam says.

"He's usually ... a lot calmer. Travel upsets him. And I had to push him a lot today."

"You don't have to apologize for him, baby. I figure the man's got a right to be the way he is, after what he's been through."

She wishes he'd _fight_ with her.

She almost gets her chance for a fight a few minutes later, when Cam pulls up somewhere and parks, but he's too quick for her. "Won't be a minute," he says, and he's out of the car and gone before she can stop him. She'd drive off and leave him here—she _would_ —but he's taken the keys.

It's fifteen minutes before he gets back, carrying two large sacks, and by then she's worked out that they're parked behind (god help them) a Take Out Rib Joint that looks like an invitation to food poisoning.

"Sam said this place was great," he says, passing her the sacks as he gets into the car, "and it sure was jammed, so I guess she was right. Got a couple pounds of ribs, cole slaw, potatoes, cornbread. Don't know how good the cornbread'll be, but it don't hurt to try it. Missed lunch, you know."

She sets the bags on the floor. She's not sure whether he's trying to make her feel guilty or drive her crazy. "You didn't have to come," she says.

Cam backs out of the parking spot. "You could have brought him to the SGC," he says neutrally. She glances at him sharply; apparently he's intent on his driving.

She knows why she didn't. Not only does Simon remember much more than he's ever let on about his time as a host, there are times when he just ... forgets ... he's Simon Gardner and not the _Goa'uld_ Osiris. She knows that. Now Cam does too. "It would have been too stressful for him," she says. Lying.

Cam nods. "He doesn't need any more trouble. And we could both use dinner. And I know you don't have any food."

She leans her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes wearily. She won't win this fight, but Cam will keep her secret. Simon's secret. She believes that. And because of that, she owes him as much as she has left to give, little as it is. 

"It's been a week. Neither do you."

#

He drives to her house ( _The_ house, _Jack's_ house) and pulls into the driveway. Shuts off the engine and hands her the keys, and for a long moment she stares at them, until she realizes he expects her to get out of the car and open the front door. So she does. In the short walk from the car to the house, her eyes already begin to swell and itch. Probably behind on her shots.

The house is dark and stuffy. She walks forward to switch on a light, banging her leg painfully on a table. Even after half a year, she isn't used to the placement of her own furniture here.

Cam follows her in and closes the door. She'd like to open the windows, but the garden's in bloom. She turns on the a/c instead, dropping her backpack on the couch in passing. She walks on into the kitchen, turning on lights as she goes. She opens the refrigerator. At least there's still beer.

Cam sets the bags down on the counter and opens her cupboard, searching for plates. "Beer?" she asks.

"That'd be great," he says. "Figured I'd call Sam to drive me home."

"Take the truck, if you want. It's still got all its tags. I'll get it back here somehow."

He's spreading the contents of the sacks out on the counter. She isn't sure whether the smells make her feel ravenous or nauseous. She finishes the beer and gets another. Maybe that will help. The cornbread comes in the form of small loaves. Cam breaks off a piece and samples it.

"Not bad," he says. "Better with butter, though."

"It was green. I threw it out." Two weeks ago? A month? She's not sure.

"I'd say we should eat at the table like civilized people, but I'd hate to mess up your stuff," he says.

She walks over and looks out into the dining room. The table is completely covered with books and papers. Obviously she was working on something here, but she can't remember what. Nothing sensitive, or it wouldn't be here. Probably background research. She comes back, shrugs. "Living room?"

Cam fills two plates—without consulting her—she brings more beer and the roll of paper towels. They go out to the living room. At the mere sight of the roses, her nose begins to prickle.

"I really need to take my pills," she says apologetically. "You go ahead."

She walks back to the bathroom and washes her face, then opens the cabinet. Emergency fix: she'll get Sally to shoot her up tomorrow. She swallows a double dose quickly, and when she closes the medicine cabinet again, she sees a dull necklet of red marks at the base of her throat. She hadn't thought Simon had pressed that hard, any of the times he'd had his hands around her neck today. She tugs the neck of the t-shirt wider, sees the beginnings of bruises along the tops of her shoulders. Looks down at her wrists and sighs. She'd always heard that rough sex involved sex. And was actually fun.

When she comes back out into the living room, Cam has waited for her. He smiles, seeing her, and she sits down, picking up her plate. "I just saw the bruises," she says.

"Yeah. I was a little worried there a couple of times. Figured I could get him off you before you actually stopped breathing, though," Cam says.

She doesn't answer. _Simon wouldn't hurt me?_ True. Simon Gardner wouldn't even _hit_ her, and god knows they'd had enough screaming fights, just before the end, to warrant coming to blows. 

Osiris is another matter.

She picks her way through her plate. One bite of the spare ribs is too much—she thinks of Kelowna—and she puts it down hastily, but she eats everything else. Cam pronounces the barbeque and sides more Louisiana style than truly Southern (she was pretty sure Louisiana was in the South, but never mind), but says it's good enough. He says she'll have to come visit some time when she can stay a while, and have a proper "down home" barbeque. Considering she's never come to visit his family at all—and never plans to—she thinks he's being unduly optimistic. But three beers are starting to dull the edges of the day a little. After Cam leaves, a little Scotch, a lot of coffee, she can transcribe the session with Simon, pull out the important parts and wipe the tapes. Maybe then she'll be tired enough to sleep. Or it will be morning. Pick one.

"You know he was lying, don't you?" Cam says, when they set their plates aside.

She looks at him sharply. No, Simon couldn't have been lying. It all holds together too well. He gave her _Gate addresses_ , and Simon couldn't possibly fabricate those. They can check them, anyway. Send a probe, a MALP--

"About you. What he said about you," Cam says, watching her face. "None of those things are true."

She tries to remember everything Simon said while he was abusing her. That he'd lied when he called her pretty? She stopped believing she was pretty a long time ago. No one wants _her_ —they used to want Danielle Jackson, child prodigy, now they want Dr. Danielle Jackson, SG-1. The label changes, but nobody's wanted "Dani" for … a very long time. He called her stupid—well, she's never believed that. She's frequently an idiot, but a _genius_ idiot. Pathetic? Oh, that's true. Or not. Depending on where you stand and what you know. The rest—bitch, slut, bad lay—Cam knows the truth of some of them and has no way of knowing the truth about the rest. He wants to be kind.

He wants to be more than that. If she'd let him.

She can't. She's lost so much, and you can only lose the things you _have_ , and she's almost free now. She can count her hostages to fortune on the fingers of one hand. To accept another one is a brutality that even she can't bear to inflict upon herself.

"I can't afford you," she says. It seems like a non-sequitur; she's probably the only one who knows it isn't. 

Cam looks at her. Calm, inquisitive, waiting for her to go on. When she doesn't, he says, "'M not that expensive." Making a joke out of it, if that's where she's willing to take it.

She shakes her head. "You're--" _Going to die._ She can't say it, even if it's true. Too much like wishing him dead, and she doesn't believe in luck (not really), in omens, in irrational magic and hoodoo superstition. But even so, she won't say the words. _Going to change._ Become someone who isn't the man she knows now. Taken away from her as irrevocably as if by death, and more cruelly; he'll still be here. Her teammates—in the largest sense of the word; the one hundred twenty five current members of the Gate Teams—respond to the endless culture shock of their jobs in one of two ways: a quiet mundane humorlessness that views every event from a new baby to the end of the world in precisely the same way, or the blackest of black humor. Major Barrett (SG-8) called her "Princess Leia" while they were on Kelowna. She'd recognized the reference— _Star Wars_ —but it had taken her five minutes to make the connection (Princess Leia's home planet had been destroyed by a superweapon), and fortunately, by then Major Barrett was already somewhere else. And Paulie is a friend of hers. Or at least not an enemy. But SG-8 is the Medical Unit, and Paul Barrett has been going through the Gate for six years now. When Cam has led them through the Gate for six years, he'll be just like Paulie. She remembers when Paulie came. She was still giving the Orientation Lectures then.

So she shakes her head, and repeats: "I can't afford you."

And Cam says quietly, "Still doesn't make what he said true."

He offers to stick around a while—says he won't be in the way—but she tells him she's got a few things to do and he hasn't been home in a week either. So he finishes his beer—he's only had the one—and she makes him take the ribs with him, though she keeps the side orders. She finds him the keys to the truck, and reminds him where the registration is, and oh, god, all she wants to do is throw herself into his arms and have him tell her everything's going to be all right _forever._

And it isn't going to be.

And she won't.

 _"Weak spineless sorry little cunt."_ She hears Simon's voice in her mind. _No, Cam. What he said was true._

She lets Cam out through the kitchen, and opens the garage from the house, and he starts up the truck, and backs it out. At the last minute she remembers the present, and grabs it and runs out the front door. She just catches him.

"This is yours," she says, thrusting it at him when he rolls down the window. The box is fairly large. It's that under-the-cabinet television she thought he needed for his kitchen. The box is wrapped in anniversary paper. It had been supposed to be a joke.

On the anniversary of the day he came to the SGC, they were on Kelowna.

"Thanks," Cam says, sounding a little baffled. 

"Goodnight." She turns around and walks back into the house. Alone now. Again, always, still. And Skaara's dead, and she promised Jack—she's sure she did—she'd take care of him, and she hasn't.

She's failed.

Again.

#

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from Gardner.

He'd read the transcripts of the debriefings—interrogations, really. Dani'd done the first one, right after they got him back from the _Tok'ra_. There was film on that. Gardner'd been quiet, answering in short sentences, not making eye contact.

The others are longer, done by the NID at a sanatorium in Virginia. They ask him about troop strength, deployment, weapons, what the _Goa'uld_ are planning. Gardner answers the questions as well as he can, but even Cam (not really a _Goa'uld_ expert, not like some) can see the questions are wide of the mark. The _Goa'uld_ just aren't that organized, thank the Good Lord. Even somebody as high-up as Osiris wouldn't have any idea about what the other System Lords have, or what they're planning. Gardner can tell them about what Osiris had and did, but a lot of the time he'd kept saying he just didn't remember. When he'd said it for long enough, they'd finally let him go back to his normal life. After seeing him, Cam's not sure whether that's a good idea or not. Being in that hotel room... A little bit Hannibal Lector, a little bit _The Exorcist_. All creepy. He's not ashamed to admit he'd been scared to death the whole time. Not for himself. For her. The moment they walked in there, Gardner'd been all over her. Doing everything he could to make her crack. It's God's own mercy the man doesn't know about either Colonel O'Neill or Abydos. He couldn't throw those things at her.

Tried everything else, though, and Cam just _aches_ for her, sitting there, listening to him, hour after hour, while he drips poison in her ear. Saying all those things Cam knows with all his heart aren't true. And also knows she believes. Because Gardner probably isn't the first—or the last—person to say them to her. The bastards all have the same playbook: Hansen said pretty much the same things to Sam. Take a fine smart lovely—loving—lady, call her "ugly" and "stupid" for long enough, and hey, maybe she'll start to believe you. And then maybe you won't have to work to live up to what she is, because you can drag her down into the mud with you. He's never thought that was any way to live. Or love.

And she kept going, pushing Gardner into a corner, just as ugly about it as he was, but Cam knows love him or hate him, she's still trying to protect him. Gardner not only remembers _a lot_ more than he's ever let on, he's maybe a little confused about who he really is.

She says he isn't dangerous. It's not that Cam thinks she's never wrong, but he trusts her on this one. She's got a ruthless streak a mile wide, and she hates the _Goa'uld_ like a stump-preacher hates Death and Hell. Probably the worst Gardner's gonna get up to is giving his lectures in Ancient Egyptian. So Cam guesses what General Landry and the NID don't know won't hurt them. Sam said he'd learn what to leave out of the mission reports. She was right as usual. But it's hard to remember when he's been so glad to leave a place as he is to leave that hotel. And he's tired and Little Miss is just plain exhausted. Cranky, too, and wants to fight, but he don't let her get started. Picks up some takeout and takes her home.

He'd like to take her back to his place, wrap her up warm (it's summer, but she's shivering) and lay her out and get her to _rest_ , but that's past praying for. At least he gets food into her before she throws him out. He'd really like to stay, but she's just spoiling for a brawl. He'd let her rip up at him if he thought it would help, but it's too soon. It'd just wind her up further, and not do anybody any good. So he goes, and on his way out the driveway she comes running out of the house with a big box wrapped in silver paper, saying it's for him. He's halfway home before he figures it out. It's been a year. A year and a few days, actually; it was a year to the day while they were on Kelowna.

So he drives home. His mailbox is crammed, and there are a couple of slips saying there're things at the Post Office. He goes upstairs—doesn't even want to look in the refrigerator, but the beer's in there—so he dumps everything on the counter—box, takeout, mail—grabs one quick and calls Sam.

"How'd it go?" she asks.

"He's a piece of work."

"That bad?"

Cam sighs. "I'm glad I was there. You ever meet him?"

Sam makes an amused-not-amused noise. "Once. I'm not sure it counts. We'd just gotten him back."

"It really doesn't," Cam says.

"How's Dani?"

"Says she's fine." He knows Sam will know exactly how to interpret that.

"Yeah, right. I hope it was worth it."

"Looks like we got a fair amount of information. She was on the money. Osiris was doing his best to spy on Anubis. Anubis finally put the wind up him, and he lit out after Dani. She gave me a present," he adds, changing the subject.

"Oh, god, Cam, I'd completely forgotten." Sam sounds contrite. "It's your anniversary."

"Helluva anniversary."

Sam snorts rudely. "Pretty typical, I'd say. What is it?"

"Hang on." He cradles the phone against his ear, tears the wrapping off the box. "I'll be damned."

"What?"

"You're gonna have to come over and help me hook this up. It's a television set for my kitchen."

"Hey, she bought it!" Sam sounds momentarily delighted. "She was asking me about them a while back. She said you spent so much time in there you needed one."

Despite the day—and the week—and the _month_ —he smiles. "On the money there."

"I can do it ... Friday? We've got seventy-two—I left a message on your machine—but I want to run some more tests on that _naquadriaah_ sample tomorrow, so I'm going in."

"All work and no play, Sam." He sighs. "Yeah, well, I'm going in too."

"Why?" She sounds confused.

"Well, car's there. I drove home in the truck. Figure I'll give Dani a call and see if I can't pick her up in the morning—'cause you know she's going to go in—and ride in with her. That way I can get a look at my desk and pick up my car."

"You work too hard," Sam says.

"Pot, kettle," he says, and she laughs. They chat for a few more minutes—she's had email from Cassie, who's delightedly exploring France—then he hangs up. Gets another beer, then steels himself to explore the refrigerator. Pretty much as bad as he thought.

After he comes back from his trip to the Dumpster, he sits down on the couch to call Little Miss. House phone first. No answer, and he can't leave a message, because the memory's full. She isn't answering her cell. He sighs, and tries her beeper, the court of last resort. A brief distracted conversation later, and she's agreed to ride in with him in the morning. She's also agreed to go to bed, but he's pretty sure she'll forget about that.

He leans his head against the back of the couch and closes his eyes. Between Gardner and Abydos, he's got the feeling the two of them are pretty much back to Square One again. A damned shame. But Momma always told him patience is a virtue, and Cam's found she's generally been right.

#

When Cam leaves, she pours herself a Scotch and takes the tape recorder and the tapes and her notebook up to her study. One of the things she wants to check is fairly early on the tape. She checks her watch. Yes, not that late, Teal'c should still be awake. She places her call.

"Teal'c."

"Hi, T, it's me."

"I bid you good evening, Danielle Jackson. Did your interview go as you had hoped?"

"I think so. We have some information I think we can check out, anyway. I have a couple of questions for you right now, though. If I'm not disturbing you?"

"You are not. Indeed, I believe you are the one who is disturbed."

 _You have no idea._ "Probably. Okay. Simon said the main reason Ra banished Anubis was for ... creating a _harceisis?_ Do you know what he meant?"

There's a very long pause. "A _harceisis_ is the offspring of two _Goa'uld_ hosts," Teal'c finally says. "Such a child is born with all the knowledge of both the _Goa'uld_ who created it."

She thinks hard. Each _Goa'uld_ —as far as they understand—has the knowledge of every _Goa'uld_ before it: the Queen _Goa'uld_ passes down all of her memories to her offspring, and they have hers, theirs, and those of every Queen before her. What would—or could—a _harceisis_ have? The memories of two lines of Queens? The memories of a line of male _Goa'uld?_ "So that's bad, right?" she asks.

"Such creatures are destroyed wherever they are discovered, as are the _Goa'uld_ who spawned them," Teal'c says firmly.

"Well, Anubis wasn't. He took his _harceisis_ as a host, and he was banished, according to Simon. Next question: what would the _Goa'uld_ be referring to if they were speaking of a 'Higher Realm?'" Asking Teal'c is a long shot: she couldn't get anything much out of Simon. On the other hand, it was tough getting Simon to speak sensibly for any period about the times Osiris was actually in Anubis's presence.

"I do not know, Danielle Jackson. The _Goa'uld_ believe in no gods but themselves. And they are false gods, so their beliefs are worthless."

"Right." She knows the Jaffa believe in a paradise, but it's hardly likely Anubis went to Kheb and came back again. The Jaffa's Kheb isn't a physical location, anyway. "Okay. This is some help. Sorry to bother you."

"Are you well?" Teal'c asks.

Suddenly her eyes burn and her chest is tight. She swallows hard. "We survive," she answers. She takes a deep breath. "I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

Teal'c wishes her a serene repose and cuts the connection. She's not sure whether he's never quite mastered the phrase "good night's sleep" or just thinks it's silly. Probably the latter. There are times she thinks she'd kill for a "serene repose" at this point. Well, she slept on the _tel'tak_. That counts. And she sleeps well on Cam's couch. Slept well. It isn't fair to either of them to keep that up. She doesn't care so much about herself, but _Cam_...

Oh, god, Cam. Dying by minutes and inches, because _yes_ , this job is that important. And it's going to kill them all, and she knows her luck by now. She'll be the last one alive. She'll watch them all die. Him, Sammy, even Teal'c. Maybe by then she won't care any more. Wouldn't that be nice? She sighs, and digs in a drawer for her earbuds. The sound-quality on the tape is shit; the earbuds will boost it a bit. She slows down the playback, opens her laptop, and starts to transcribe.

An hour later her beeper rouses her, buzzing inside her bra. She's set it to "stun" and tucked it in there because she knows she won't hear anything ring with the earbuds in. She digs it out and checks the number. Cam is calling from home. That's a small relief. Probably not a real emergency. She pulls out the earbuds and picks up her cell.

"I was transcribing," she says, when he answers. Cam's endless passion to reach her by phone at times a less-suspicious individual would simply assume she was _asleep_ has never ceased to amaze her.

"Yeah, I, uh ... thanks," he says.

There's a long pause, as she tries to figure out _what the hell he's talking about_. 

"The television. It's real nice."

Coffee. She needs coffee. "I called Teal'c. He was able to help me out a little bit." The line isn't really secure, so she can't go into details.

She hears Cam sigh. "That's good. You plannin' to go to bed? Ever?"

"Of course I am. I just need to finish this transcript first."

There's a moment of silence. "Baby, we were there for _eight hours_."

Were they? Probably. "I'm not transcribing all of it, Cam," she says.

"Yeah. Look. I've got an idea. How 'bout I stop by in the morning and we drive in together? That way I can drop off the truck, you drive me in, I pick up my car, everything's easy."

"Okay, sure, fine. What time?"

"Be there about five-thirty."

She suppresses a groan. She lives half-an-hour from the Mountain. And it takes her forty-five minutes every morning to get from the parking lot to her desk, between security checkpoints and changing into her uniform. "Okay. Fine."

"Get some sleep." He sounds more hopeful than as if he actually thinks she will, but she says she will, and when she says it, she isn't really lying. She means to. She closes her cellphone and goes to make coffee. That's at ten. Around midnight she's three-quarters done with the tapes. At two she's finished, but she needs to go back through the transcript to clean it up and make her editing less noticeable. By then it's three-thirty, and there's hardly any point in ninety minutes of sleep, so she types in the rest of her notes and copies out the Gate addresses neatly, and logs on, and sends a copy of her report to herself at the Mountain, and emails General Landry to let him know she's finished with Dr. Gardner and he can be released, and emails Simon as well (brief, professional, formal) thanking him for his help and apologizing, on behalf of the U.S. Government, for the inconvenience. She'll phone the hotel later today, as well, to make sure he's gotten the message. She prints out her document and puts it into a folder and tucks it into her knapsack and shuts down her computer. And then she pries open the casings of the tapes, and takes the tangled jumble of tape down to the garage, and winds it around the big magnet she keeps out there before cutting the tape up into tiny fragments and flushing it down the toilet.

Then shower. In the mirror, she sees the bruises are darkening nicely. She's not sure she recognizes the woman in the reflection. Here she stood a week or so ago, getting dressed to go to work, to go on a routine (for them) survey mission. And she realizes, with a sense more of anger than anything else, she's back to measuring her life in _since_. How long has it been since Jack went into stasis in Antarctica? How long since he died? How long since Anubis destroyed Abydos? "Can't do this any more," she whispers to the woman in the mirror. Then she gets dressed and goes off to make coffee. Espresso, this time.

She's on her third—large—mug when Cam pulls up in the driveway. She opens the front door. He's carrying a brown paper bag. "Figured you'd give me coffee if I asked nicely," he says. "Also figured you didn't have any milk."

"You're right," she says.

He follows her into the kitchen. She gets out the filters for the regular coffee pot.

"Don't want to put you to any trouble," Cam says.

"I could use a cup." She opens the refrigerator for a bottle of water.

"How much you had already?" Cam asks suspiciously.

"None. I've been drinking espresso." She adds coffee by eye, pours in the water. 

Cam has picked up the coffee jar—vacuum-sealed, anonymous white porcelain—and is sniffing it curiously. "What's this?"

"Sumatra Mandheling. Expensive, but worth it."

He doesn't make the obvious joke, but Cam tends to surprise you that way. "That what you took to Kelowna?"

"Yes. I keep some in my office. Sometimes I can sneak into the Security Station on 16 and brew a pot. Or take it along on overnights. It's a hell of a lot better than that crap in the MREs."

"I don't know what they put in those, but it sure isn't food," Cam says feelingly. He reaches into the bag and pulls out a smaller white one. "I brought pastry. Those chocolate things you like."

She opens the bag and inspects the contents. _Panne au chocolat_. She takes one out and bites into it. Cam closes the jar and sets it back on the counter.

The coffee finishes. She takes down mugs and sugar, and refuses to wince when Cam adds milk. She spoons four teaspoons of sugar into her cup and pours it full.

"Strong stuff," Cam says, sipping. "But I like it. Where you buy it around here?"

"Online. Don't mistake Colorado Springs for civilization."

She has a second cup. Cam finishes his, and a pastry, and says it's time to go. She gets out a couple of travel mugs, and divides the rest of the pot evenly between them. On her way out the door, she slings her backpack over one shoulder.

"You get any sleep?" Cam asks, holding the door for her.

"Enough," she says.

"None," he decides. "I'll drive."

#

The normalcy of her morning routine is grating. She runs into Sammy in the Changing Room—just like any other morning—and Sammy says they all have seventy-two (which really means four days, not three, since this is Thursday and unless Landry's had Graham reshuffle everything, they're on a nominal Monday to Friday schedule) but she wanted to get in some lab-time. And Dani asks if Cam knew (because why would he be in on his day off?) and Sammy says she told him last night and how did things with Simon go? And Sammy sees the bruises on her neck and shoulders—arms, too—and winces, and adds, "or should I ask?"

And she says the report's in the mainframe and she's going to try to get a meeting with the General today to discuss what to do with what she got ('implementing the intelligence,' in militaryspeak), and by then they're both changed (uniform of the day is green) and it's a quarter to seven by then, and Sammy steers her down to the Commissary. Just like any other morning.

And she doesn't want to go, but the world has been measured out in _since_ , now, for as long as she can really remember—she knows _Since_ is only two years, three months, and twenty-one days, but it looks (now) as if it's going to be measured out that way forever. So she goes, chooses waffles (no bacon today), extra syrup, and goes to sit down at their usual table. Cam and Teal'c are already there. Sammy is having what she always has: one egg (poached), a muffin, and half a grapefruit. Teal'c (as always) has eggs (scrambled) and oatmeal and grits and scrapple and hash browns and bacon and sausage and toast and several kinds of fruit. And chamomile tea. Cam has something different every time, obviously hoping he'll find something he likes. 

"This is _not_ food," he says, setting it down in disgust. (He's trying the "breakfast sandwich" again. He hated it the last time.)

She pours syrup on her waffles in silence. The package says "Golden Syrup." Cam gives her maple syrup. She won't think about that. Or about the fact that if she went to him, if she _begged_ him, he'd probably take her away from here, to his mythical home and his mythical family, and hide her, and no one would ever find her again. And Anubis would come and kill them all. But long before that, he'd be dead somewhere beyond the Gate.

"Those any good?" Cam asks. She glances up. "The waffles."

"You had them. You didn't like them."

"Gotta be better than this," he says in disgust. "So. What're you doing today? Seeing as we're—technically—not here."

"Reporting to General Landry, if he's available."

"Shouldn't take all day," Cam says. "You want to get in a workout?"

She stares at him, because yes, all the words make sense. She just can't figure out the reasoning. Cam's been sparring against Teal'c for the last few months. He's gotten good enough, and she doesn't really have the upper body strength to challenge him as much as he needs. Besides, Teal'c's more the size of the opponents he's likely to be facing if he ever actually has to _use_ what he's learning.

"Get some of the kinks out," Cam says. "Because after yesterday I kinda wanted to hit something. I figure maybe you did too."

"I'll see if I have time," she says. Grudgingly. She knows what he's trying to do.

Back to her office.

She's a little surprised to find chocolate waiting for her on her desk, because Cam came in _with_ her, and he was in the Commissary before her. When did he have time to get down to her office?

Nevertheless.

She tosses the bars in a drawer and logs in. Spends two hours working her way through the soothing/irritating backlog a week's absence brings. Unfortunately she isn't left alone to do it, because a week's absence also means word has had time to filter pretty thoroughly through the grapevine. Nyan is first, coming to offer his condolences on the death of her family. To leave a small wrapped package on her desk. _"I'm sorry, Dr. Jackson. I know this isn't going to be a very happy birthday for you, but I wanted to give you this anyway."_

She checks her calendar. Her birthday's tomorrow. _Happy Birthday, Dana're, your family's dead._

She looks up at her shelves. A photo of Sha're—the image captured from Sammy's camcorder on the second Abydos Mission; the only picture she has of her sister—a photo of Skaara, taken on his wedding day. She'd brought him two goats as a wedding present. The SGC has seen stranger things. It occurs to her that Abydan is a dead language now. She is its last speaker. There is no one else.

Amelia comes next. First condolences, then she manages to surprise Dani by asking if she wants help in performing the funerary rituals.

"I hadn't actually planned..." 

What kind of ritual to you perform to send an entire planet off to the Land of the Dead? The Abydans had still believed—in the True Gods, whose forms the _Goa'uld_ had usurped. They'd continued to worship and make offerings even after Ra was gone; in the year she'd lived on Abydos, she'd assured them: yes, the True Gods were kind, and loving. She has never believed in gods. There's no one to accept any offering she might make on behalf of the dead.

"If you change your mind, let me know," Amelia says before she leaves.

She has other visitors. Some are genuinely sorry for her loss, some are simply making a dutiful courtesy visit. Some are curiosity seekers; there are always those; even in the SGC, SG-1 is famous. Finally she closes and locks her door. She isn't actually supposed to be here anyway.

With the urgent (trivial) email out of the way, she opens her documents file. It's only then she remembers her work-document on the translation of Ancient. Something that was of all-consuming importance a week ago, and now she can barely remember what she was doing. She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But it's late enough in the morning now, so she phones the hotel. Dr. Gardner, she's told, has already checked out. She feels a certain relief at not needing to talk to him again. She could live without that today. She's going to have to talk to General Landry, and that's bad enough. _Sufficient unto the day._ She picks up the file folder.

Eight Gate addresses. All to locations used by Anubis and discovered by Osiris. The question is, did Anubis mean him to discover them? Does he know they've been discovered? And what's there? She doesn't know, and Simon wasn't really sure. One of the addresses is labeled "Tartarus"—Osiris believed it was Anubis's throneworld, the place where he keeps his Queen, Ereshkigal. They know—from the autopsies they've done—the Kull Warriors are clones controlled by symbiotes, but they seem to be nearly mindless. Having met Egeria, she's well aware a Queen can create mindless offspring as well as passing down her full genetic memory. Perhaps Ereshkigal is doing the same thing. In that case, destroying Tartarus is certainly a priority. If they can manage it.

Even Osiris wasn't sure what the other seven addresses were.

She props her chin on her hands and stares at the screen. She needs to make recommendations, and that's insane. They haven't got the manpower to do the obvious thing: go look.

The _Tok'ra_ might know something, but will they tell them? They took a couple of major hits lately, and there are few of them left since Revanna. As for the Jaffa... with Anubis killing "gods" right and left, the Free Jaffa are stronger than they've ever been, but how much is that saying? Their cooperation with the SGC is spotty at best, and if they're asked to throw themselves against Anubis, Earth will lose what little support they've managed to retain. She sighs.

Step one: find out what locations these coordinates represent.

Step two: see if any of their offworld allies has any information about these locations...

_Step three: profit!_

Jack. (And suddenly, sharper than memory, she can see Teal'c's face the first time he saw an episode of _South Park_.)

Her door opens and Cam walks in.

"Knocking's nice."

"It was locked." He sets a cup of coffee on her desk. "We've got a meeting with the General in fifteen."

She picks up the coffee. "About?"

"Your report on Gardner."

"Nice of him to schedule it without consulting me."

"Busy guy," Cam says. "I figure after that, we hit the gym."

Which is actually starting to sound like a good idea, because she's pretty sure after talking to Landry, she _will_ want to hit something.

Cam stands behind her, and his hands settle gently on the points of her shoulders. Outside the compass of the bruises. He can't have seen all of them—her shirt covers a lot of them—but she realizes he knows exactly where all of them are. He was watching Simon that closely yesterday. She shouldn't want him to touch her, shouldn't welcome it, but she does.

"People giving you a hard time?" he asks.

"Too much sympathy." The words are out of her mouth before she thinks. She doesn't want to talk about it. It's hard to resist. _Neshaat was going to have a baby. I was going to ask if I could go home for the birth. The last time I was really home was for Skaara's sha'loqui. We all went. I meant to go back sooner._ She couldn't bring herself to ask General Landry for such an expensive favor, though. Not to use the Stargate for what amounted to a pleasure trip. She'd never minded asking General Hammond if she could go home for a visit, but she didn't know Landry. And she'd needed all her credit with him for other things. Tracking down leads to any technology that would have allowed them to safely revive Jack.

Look how well that turned out.

"Hard to know what to say," Cam says. "Think Cassie would, though."

Cassie lost everyone and everything when Nirrti destroyed Hanka. And then she lost Janet, too. Yes, Cassie knows.

"You won't—Sammy won't—tell her? Because—this is supposed to be--"

"Her happy time, yeah. Think you should tell her when she gets back, though."

Cassie won't be back for another six weeks. It's a lifetime away. "I will."

"Better get going."

She finishes her coffee and gets to her feet. Picks up her folder. They leave her office.

#

It's the four of them and General Landry in the Briefing Room. Graham's made copies of the transcript for everybody. She puts the page with the Gate addresses on the overhead projector. Gives a general overview of what Simon told her, then goes on to the part that will interest Landry most.

"Osiris wasn't sure what these eight addresses represented. He thought one of them—Tartarus—was Anubis's throneworld. In that case, it's more than likely it's also where Anubis keeps his Queen and creates his super soldiers."

"Forgive me, Dr. Jackson. I know I lack your particular education, but I do know that "Tartarus" is Greek. Isn't Anubis supposed to be an Egyptian god?" General Landry asks.

"False god," Teal'c says.

"The _Goa'uld_ have never—necessarily—been consistent, General," she answers. "Tartarus is the Greek realm of death, the underworld. In Egyptian mythology, Anubis is identified with the underworld, the realm of death. His Queen—if Osiris is correct—is Ereshkigal—again, not Egyptian. Sumerian, actually, but also identified with the underworld."

"All very interesting, but what do you propose we do about it?"

She wonders—if she shot General Landry—if they could get General Hammond back. "Ideally, of course, we should destroy Tartarus. That would deal Anubis a crippling blow. Obviously, this is beyond our resources at the moment."

"Obviously," General Landry says, with ponderous sarcasm.

"But gathering intelligence about it and the other seven addresses Dr. Gardner has provided isn't. I suggest we ask our offworld allies—all of them—what they know about these locations." Including the Asgard, now that they're back in town.

"Thank you. I'd actually managed to come up with that notion myself."

"I'm also more than a little disturbed by what Dr. Gardner has to say about Anubis's essential nature. We know Anubis seems to be different from the other _Goa'uld_. According to what Dr. Gardner— _Osiris_ —witnessed, he's apparently _very_ different. Now you'll see, in my footnote to the transcript, I speculate about the nature of a _harceisis_ taken as a host--"

"Yes, yes, yes. I'm more interested in why it took Dr. Gardner so long to come forward with this information. Didn't he think we'd be interested?"

She knew this would take some careful tap-dancing. For a moment she's actually grateful Landry, not General Hammond, is in charge. She can fool Landry a lot of the time.

"I think the traumatic nature of his possession by Osiris caused memory loss and partial amnesia, General. When we recovered him, nobody was particularly interested in Anubis. Dr. Gardner told us Zipacna contacted Osiris and offered him an alliance with a powerful _Goa'uld_. Since Osiris was without a powerbase at the time, and had lost all of his territory during his imprisonment on Earth, he accepted the alliance as a means to regain his former power. Since—for that reason—he was nearly unknown among the System Lords at that time, Anubis chose him as his envoy to the summit. Once a member of Anubis's court, Osiris gained a certain amount of power, but found it difficult to gain the independence he craved. He returned to Earth, where he was captured and removed from Dr. Gardner, who was then debriefed over a period of several months regarding his knowledge of _Goa'uld_ plans and technology." She shrugs. "Apparently Osiris was terrified of Anubis, even while he plotted against him. Those memories were deeply buried. It's actually amazing Dr. Gardner has any of this information at all."

"Then I suppose we're very fortunate, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says, with only a light tinge of irony this time. "Very well. I'll start taking steps to verify this information as far as we can. Excellent work. Now. Considering your recent missions, I hope I don't have to order you to take it easy for a few days?"

"No, sir." She can take it easy at her desk.

"Dismissed."

They all rise.

"You heard the man," Cam says. "Ready to hit the mats?"

She rubs her nose; it itches. "I need to see Sally first."

She's late for her shots.

#

She has to wait fifteen minutes in the Infirmary before Sally can get to her. Other things, both routine and emergency, take priority. Finally Sally pulls her chart (she's almost a week late for her meds; no wonder she was having trouble) and shoots her up. Tells her to keep better track. Offers unwanted sympathy and unwanted advice. Rest. Take time for herself. Reminds her (not that Dani needed reminding) she's had a stressful year, even by the standards of the Teams, and that stress takes as much of a toll on the body as physical trauma does. Reminds her (warns, threatens) that SG-1's Quarterly Review is coming up next month, and if she doesn't pass it, she'll be downchecked until she can.

The Quarterly Review includes a psychological evaluation.

"I'm fine," she says. "I'll be fine." They always lie on their psych exams. She's lied for years. She's become expert at it by now.

Sally asks about the bruises on her neck. Dani tells her the truth. There's no reason to lie about that. Finally she's let to leave.

Off to her locker for her workout clothes. Down to the gym. Cam is waiting for her, already warming up with one of the _bashaak._

"Sorry I took so long."

"Figured you got stuck in traffic."

"Pretty much." She goes to change.

She comes back and selects her own weapon. She'll need to put on protective gear before they spar, but not just to warm up. Cam steps back off the mat, giving her room to move. The forms come easily. She's been doing this for years. Since before the Program. She learned quarterstaff in college. Something to do. At UCLA you could find people interested in everything, including pretending they were living in the eleventh century. She'd had no interest in playing "Let's Pretend," but she'd been studying ancient weapons one semester (she needed the credit-hour), and some of the reenactors in her class actually knew how to use them. She'd learned how to build a _trebuchet_ (which had actually come in handy years later and light-years away) and to use a quarterstaff. The combination of grace and force had appealed to her. She'd kept it up. Much later, knowing how to use it had saved her life. Some of the patterns—not all—translate to Jaffa forms. A stick is a staff is an energy weapon. That's saved her life, too, more than once.

The _bashaak_ spins in her hands. Her wrists and shoulders ache already; not a good sign. Maybe she can work through it. She thinks of Cam. She thinks of Simon. She'd given Simon her whole heart and trusted him absolutely. _That_ was a mistake. And obviously she doesn't learn from her mistakes, because she trusts Cam now. An appalling thought, but she knows she isn't going to stop. And she shouldn't. Because Cam leads SG-1. She _has_ to trust him. Unthinkingly, but not unquestioningly, and the fine line between the two is the knife-blade on which she dances. The blade that makes her bleed. She always has to question. To second-guess. It's her job. It keeps them all alive.

And sometimes it doesn't, because they've all died more than once. Not Cam, not yet, but the rest of them. Jack died the final time because she couldn't outguess him fast enough. Janet too. If she'd translated the probe droid's memory-cache more quickly, gotten SG-13 recalled before they were ambushed, Janet would never have been on 666 at all.

If she'd figured out that Osiris had taken Simon and not Steven, they could have captured him before he escaped to Egypt. Her life is a catalogue of too slow, too late, not good enough.

She grounds the _bashaak_. "Ready," she says, and goes to put on her protective gear.

#

She faces Cam across the mat. "Don't want you to go easy on me, here," he says. "Sometimes a good workout can clear your head."

"You think I need to clear my head?" She bows. He bows. This is practice. They begin with ritual.

"Considering everything, yeah." He attacks, she blocks. They're starting slow. Fencing, in the broadest sense of the term. They haven't sparred together in a while.

"And you're here to help." Her next attack is faster. Pushing.

"Like to be." Clash and disengage. "We're a team."

"You don't think--" Another attack; he backpedals, but only to set her up for his response. She circles, looking for an opening. He's gotten good. "--I can handle my own problems?"

"Pretty big one." The sticks clatter over each other in a rapid exchange—high, low, parry—both of them trying for a disarm, neither breaking through the other's guard.

"It's nothing new." She's been orphaned before.

"Makes it worse."

Silence for a few moments as they stalk each other, neither willing to commit to an attack. She feints, but he isn't drawn. "I'll survive," she says at last. She gives him an opening— _bashaak_ off her centerline, looking away from him—hoping to lure an attack. Instead, he drops his guard as well, and it's too good an opportunity to pass up. She swings her weapon up and across, taking him on his offside, and manages to land the first blow. "Pay attention," she says.

"Oh, I am," Cam says grimly.

It's the last time either of them speaks, because they're fighting in earnest now. And soon in deadly earnest. She's not sure why it's suddenly become so important to her to win this match—to make Cam yield, to make him _submit_ —but she realizes she _has_ to. Has to have this victory. She's fighting all out, and the only thing saving him from serious injury is the fact he's heavily-padded, the _bashaaks_ are made of light wood … and he's good.

Because he is. He's worked at this, worked hard. Just as he's worked at everything else he's ever done. When he hits her back—and he does—he isn't playing either. It hurts. And as the minutes pass, his strategy becomes clear.

She's tiring.

How long have they been sparring? Ten minutes? More? She'd never last this long against a Jaffa; her tactics have always been based on speed and surprise. Cam is simply wearing her down; smart enough not to close with her, good enough to parry the finishing moves she launches. She can hurt him, but not enough to win. If she doesn't take him out soon, she never will.

She _has_ to win.

Anger and need make her reckless. She closes, trying for a decisive disarm. Risky under the best of circumstances, and these aren't those. Her wrist buckles, and she hisses in pain as he twists the _bashaak_ out of her hands. She dives for it, but he slams his foot down on it, trapping it against the mat. She can't look up, can't look at him, can't _yield_ \--

She hears him sigh. He moves away. She hears the ripping sound as he removes his protective gear, the clatter as he puts his _bashaak_ back on the rack. He comes back, squatting down to pick up her weapon. She reaches out—still not looking—and grabs his wrist. He doesn't resist. She can feel his pulse beneath her fingers. Fast, because of the workout, but slowing as she counts it, toward a resting rate. His skin is hot and moist.

She lost the match. One more failure, and nothing solved. "At least you didn't let me win," she says.

"Wouldn't do that to you," Cam answers. It's ... something, but she doesn't know what. Honesty, maybe. She supposes she'd rather have the truth from Cam—even if it hurts—than a lie.

He's never lied to her.

She releases him and pushes herself to her feet, light-headed and aching and bruised. Cam picks up the other _bashaak_ and racks it. She pulls off the helmet and plastron and walks over to the shelves. She doesn't really know what to do with herself.

"Know you don't really want any advice, good or bad, right now," Cam says from behind her.

She laughs without humor. It sounds to her ears like the sounds Simon made yesterday, and that disturbs her as much as anything has recently. "I've never known you to give bad advice, Cam," she says evenly.

"I try to stick to orders. Fewer hard feelings. This is just my opinion, though. If you don't find some way to step back a little, you're not going to be there when we really need you."

She turns around, not sure whether to be angry or hurt, but he's already walking away, heading for the showers. She runs a hand through her hair—soaking wet—and walks to the bench to pick up her glasses. 

He's right, and she doesn't know what to do about it. So after she showers, she doesn't go back to her office. She goes down to Sammy's lab. The warning light is on. She waits outside until it goes off—only a minute or two— then cautiously opens the door. Sammy pushes up her goggles.

"Either we've finally developed weather down here, or you've finished your workout with Cam," she says.

Dani runs a hand through her hair—still wet, but it's shower water now—and sits down on a stool. "Workout," she says.

Sammy studies her for a moment. "You look like hell."

"I tried to kill him," Dani admits. 

Sammy raises her eyebrows. "And—obviously—didn't succeed. You'd look happier," Sammy explains.

Dani props her elbows on Sammy's workbench and her chin on her hands. "Doing something exciting?" she asks morosely.

"Measuring the decay rate of _naquadriaah_."

"Shouldn't that take a couple of centuries?"

"You're thinking of half-life. And yes, if I wanted to sit around my lab until my sample had actually turned to lead, it would take a couple of centuries. Actually, it would take, as far as I can calculate, approximately twenty-eight billion years. At a rough estimate."

"That's a long time."

"About twice as long as thorium, if you're counting. Or, half again as long as the universe is old."

She wrinkles her nose. "So... _naquadriaah_ is older than the universe?"

"Well, it can't be. Of course, neither _naquaadah_ nor _naquadriaah_ necessarily have to have originated in this universe. They could have come here from another universe. Or they may have the ability to influence time as one of their properties. Or my calculations may be off."

"When will you know which it is?"

"When I've run a lot more tests. So we'll hope we can get more _naquadriaah_ from Kelowna, because this sample is going to have to be parceled out to a lot of different places, and that won't leave much for me to work with."

Dani sighs. "You'll probably be done with that when I've finished writing a grammar of Ancient."

Sammy looks up and smiles. "Are you close?"

"Closer. If I get the paper I'm working on written, and sent off with the _Odyssey_ on its next trip to Atlantis, and get the answers back I need ... maybe. In a couple of years. If we all live."

"Any of us could slip in the bathtub and break our necks tomorrow," Sammy says. "No guarantees."

"I know," Dani says.

"Look," Sammy says. "I'm pretty sure the Ancients can take care of themselves for at least one night. Why don't you come home with me tonight? Kid's away. We'll get a bunch of junk food. Hang out. Just the two of us."

She's about to say "no," but she hesitates. Because Cam's right. And if she goes home, she'll just work herself past exhaustion again. Or do something really stupid. "I'll be lousy company," she warns.

"I'll get you drunk," Sammy says. "Go pack up whatever you can't live without. I've just got to set up one more test."

"Sure."

Dani goes back to her office, pulling the files she wants (at least the ones she's allowed to remove from the Mountain) and packing her backpack to leave. There are a few more wrapped packages on her worktable next to the one Nyan left; a few cards. She ignores them for now. She'll deal with them when she comes back. _Made it through another one._ It's what the Gate Teams always say. She supposes this counts as making it through, but oh, it doesn't feel as if she has...

She doesn't hurry, because she knows "setting up one more test" can take quite some time, in Sammy's world. Logs out of the mainframe, sets up the phone to forward priority calls to her cell. Goes back down to Sammy's lab and waits another half an hour, eating chocolate, because it's actually (sort of) lunch time.

"Cam stopped by a few minutes ago," Sammy says (head down, fiddling). "I said we were leaving, and he should go on home."

"Good," Dani says.

"He was limping," Sammy adds.

"I hit him. Sort of," Dani explains. (Not sort of.) And she's tired now—physically—muscles aching with her workout, lulled, just a bit, by the endorphin high. The calm after the storm. So she's sorry, now, she hit him as hard as she did. She meant to hurt him at the time, and anger has no place in combat. Teal'c has told her that, thousands of times. _Anger destroys the judgment of a warrior. Anger is his enemy._ SG-1 lives and dies on the basis of her judgment. And Sammy's, and Cam's, and Teal'c's. If she loses that, she's finished.

And eventually Sammy is done, and they change and go.

#

She follows Sammy's Volvo down the twisting access road, and onto the highway, and off to the supermarket (limping herself, by now, and feeling the drag of exhaustion), where they fill the cart with junk food: chips and cookies and ice cream in half a dozen flavors, and then they troll the Frozen Food department for even more toxic junk food: pizza rolls and hot wings and Jamaican pasties and all the terrible additive-laden things (like a Sara Lee cake) that are good because they're horrible. Sammy buys wine coolers. Dani buys beer. They load it all into Sammy's trunk, and drive on.

She pulls up in Sammy's driveway five minutes behind her. No matter how much Sammy bitches about Dani's driving (and general lack of safety), it's Sammy who drives like a bat out of hell, running yellow lights and leaving Dani to sit at red ones. By the time she arrives, Sammy has most of the groceries into the house. Dani picks up the last bag and follows her in.

"Oh good," Sammy says. "That's everything."

They unpack the bags. The beer she bought isn't cold, but Sammy has some already. Dani takes one out. She's moving stiffly by now.

"You ought to strip off and let me get a look at you," Sammy says. "You can put your bag in Cassie's room."

Sammy's right, so Dani goes, beer in one hand, go-bag in the other, to Cassie's room. Not really Cassie's room any more. Stripped, packed, changed out in anticipation of her move to college. A transitional space once again. She pulls off her shirt, swearing quietly—did she actually manage to sprain her wrist? It feels like it—then her t-shirt, then drops her khakis. The livid red marks of soon-to-be bruises are plain, on ribs, shins, thighs....

"I thought you guys wore padding to work out," Sammy says, coming in. Ibuprofen in one hand, liniment in the other. Towel over one arm.

"We do." She rubs the mark on her thigh. "Chest and head. You're supposed to block."

"Maybe you should do that more often." Sammy hands her the bottle; Dani shakes out four pills and swallows them with beer.

Sammy touches the bruises across her shoulders. "He really did a number on you."

She doesn't mean Cam. Dani sighs. "I had to push him to get what I needed."

"Nothing like an old boyfriend who's gone crazy, right? Off with the bra. I'm going to work on those too. They must hurt like hell."

"Only when I breathe." She can't believe she didn't notice at the time.

She chugs the rest of her beer and peels off the bra. Sports bra. One piece. All elastic. The women on the Gate Teams learned early not to wear bras with metal parts or fastenings—a near-miss from a staff-weapon generates enough microwave energy to heat any metal you're wearing to the point it causes burns. Not too bad if it's your belt buckle or the snaps on your tac-vest. Pretty painful if it's your underwires.

Sammy spreads out the towel on the bed, and she lies down.

"So who won?" she asks. The cream is cold, and Dani twitches.

"Yesterday, or today?" she asks, her voice muffled by the pillow.

"Either," Sammy asks. She's gentle on the sides of Dani's neck, firmer on her shoulders, easing the soreness away. "You should have put in for PT."

"I'm not that bright. As in war, there are no victors." Two different conversations.

"Teal'c says he's pretty good."

"He is. He works hard." At everything. "Quarterly review next month."

"MacKenzie's going to ask, you know." Sammy's moved on to her ribs. Not as bad as the bruises on her legs; the chest plastron blunted some of the force of the blows. Still bruises, though.

"He never thought they were my family." She's never been quite sure whether MacKenzie thought she was delusional, or whether he thought she was humoring the backward locals. She does know he never believed the truth was true.

"Will you be okay?" To pass the review, Sammy means.

"If he didn't certify me in March, he won't certify me in August," Dani says, and there's so much truth in that she really doesn't know what to do about it. She's abysmally bad at lying. Has never done it well. Hates doing it, just to begin with. But she lies to MacKenzie as easily as she breathes. And—apparently—convincingly, telling him she's sane, she's fine, she's _normal_...

"That's good, then," Sammy says. "I've gotten used to you. Turn over."

Dani does, and Sammy works liniment into the bruises across her thighs. There's a bad one on her calf, or at least it will be in the morning. She hisses and squirms as Sammy prods.

"Two words: shin guards," Sammy says remorselessly. "And some time in the Jacuzzi wouldn't kill you. Just as well you don't wear skirts. You wouldn't be able to for a couple of weeks."

"That's why there's Dermablend. Thanks, Sammy. That feels better."

"And you smell like a locker room. Cassie left some stuff here. Go ahead and put it on; no point in messing up your own clothes. I'll toss them in the wash later. You should leave that on for a couple of hours before you shower. Pizza rolls should be about ready."

"Right."

Sammy leaves and Dani gets up off the bed, moving much less stiffly now under the dual influences of Ben-Gay and ibuprofen. She rummages through Cassie's dresser drawers, turning up a pair of _Hello Kitty_ flannel pajama bottoms and a faded purple t-shirt that proclaims her a "Rock Star." Good enough. She pads out to the kitchen, where Sammy is taking the pizza rolls out of the oven. She rummages in the fridge for another beer, and eyes the food.

"They're too hot. You'll burn yourself," Sammy says, and offers her the potato chips instead. Dani tears open the bag. She can see the street from Sammy's kitchen. There's a park across the way. It's July—school's out—and a couple of kids (she's lousy at guessing ages, and doesn't even try) are romping with a dog and a Frisbee. A scene as alien to her as anything she's ever witnessed through the Stargate.

"When do we stop, Sammy?" she asks. "When is it over? When are we _done_?" She thinks she must be drunk (though she can't be, on a beer and a half) or crazy, or _something,_ to be saying things like this to Sammy. Because these are the things you never say. Not even to your closest, dearest friends.

"I don't know," Sammy says. She speaks slowly, as if the words hurt. "I know you only came—in the beginning—to get ... Skaara back."

 _I stayed for all of you._ "To fight the _Goa'uld_ ," Dani says, because that's the truth, or part of it. "Skaara said that was my job. When we took him home ... I thought of staying. I didn't belong there anymore. We both knew it."

"I know. We... We were glad you decided to come back."

She'd like to think she is too. She was. Then. Then it had seemed so simple.

"Maybe..." Sammy says reluctantly, "Maybe it's something that won't _be_ done. Not in our lifetimes." The _Tok'ra_ have been fighting the _Goa'uld_ since the Time of Ra. The Asgard, for longer. The _Goa'uld_ are still here. 

"Job security, then," Dani says, setting aside the potato chips and reaching for a pizza roll. Sammy was right. She does burn herself.

Eventually the pizza rolls cool enough to be eaten, and are, and they each select a pint of ice cream (New York Super Fudge Chunk for Dani, Cherry Garcia for Sammy), and take ice cream and spoons and their drinks into the living room to curl up on the couch and channel surf (it entertains Dani just a bit to think that the two of them represent a good portion of the brain trust of Earth right here, and Sammy has changed into yoga pants and a ratty grey t-shirt she wouldn't be caught dead ten feet outside the house in, and if only the world could see them now). Sammy has a stack of DVDs from Netflix they'll watch later. Or not.

"Tomorrow's your birthday. Not a very happy one," Sammy says.

"I thought, in honor of the day, I'd get drunk and fuck my way through the starting lineup of the Colorado Avalanche," Dani says. It actually sounds moderately appealing. But it would probably take too much work to arrange.

"The Avalanche is a hockey team," Sammy says. "I don't think they have a starting lineup."

"The Denver Broncos, then." Somebody must have a starting lineup. She's sure it's a sports term.

"Well, I'm going to be spending a good portion of tomorrow hooking up that television you bought Cam," Sammy says. "He really likes it."

"Hooking it up?"

"Have to run the cable into the kitchen, or else he won't get any reception. It's not difficult. It's just going to take a while. At least we'll get Teal'c out for the day."

"He'll like that." The silence stretches. "Aren't you going to say I should come over too?" Dani finally asks.

"I like my head where it is," Sammy says. "Yes, it would be great if you did. And no, nobody expects you to be particularly good company. But for god's sake, Dani, even having you sitting in the corner of the living room drinking and swearing at us beats the living hell out of thinking you're out cruising the bars looking for some guy to beat you up."

"I--" She opens and closes her mouth several times. Sammy has actually managed to shock her. Did Cam say something? Or did Sammy just guess? "I don't look for guys to beat me up," she finally says. _That only happened once. It was an accident._ But she's not sure—any more—her judgment is sound enough for her to be able to play that particular game. There's a fine line between self-abuse and self-destruction. She's not completely sure she can stay on the right side of it. She knows why. The subconscious mind, searching desperately for an escape from her life. She'll head it off and take the penalty in increased nightmares. She'll cope.

Sammy sighs. "I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry."

"Just out of curiosity... ?"

"Your security review. Don't tell me you thought that was a one-time-only thing when you joined the SGC? They're ongoing." Sammy sounds tired. Apologetic.

Ongoing? That actually had never occurred to her. "So ... everybody knows everything about me?"

Sammy smiles bitterly. "Gate Team. Department head. Yeah, pretty much, but not everybody. I didn't get to see any details about your bank accounts, because none of your financials were red-flagged, and Team leaders only see a summary. General Landry can see the whole thing, but I doubt he bothers. The Pentagon, of course. Homeworld. It's a matter of your security clearance."

"What about you? Yours?"

"I've never seen mine. That's not how it works."

"So ... the reason MacKenzie's always asking me about my sex life is because he's seen my security review?"

"He's your psychiatrist. He's got clearance."

"I want a new psychiatrist."

"Don't we all?"

She thinks about it for a while. Wondering what they know—what they _think_ they know—and how they know it. "So it said I'm a security risk because I have sex?"

Sammy hesitates. 

"C'mon, Sammy. I know what I do, and—apparently—so do you."

"Well, once they ruled out the idea you were using these, uh, events, as a cover to pass information to someone--" Dani yelps with surprise and angry amusement. "--believe me, they considered it," Sammy says seriously. "They just decided it was aberrant sexual behavior. Not aberrant enough to gig you for. Just unusual."

"I have sex with men!" That's supposed to be both legal and desirable. Isn't it?

"In a rented hotel room."

"For security reasons!"

"And—this is what the report says, Dani, not me—apparently with no interest or intention of forming a stable, long-term relationship."

"Have these people _tried_ having our jobs and forming a 'stable, long-term relationship?'" Dani asks waspishly. She isn't amused now. She's just angry, but not at Sammy. " _They_ can try telling somebody they work in Deep Space Telemetry and seeing just how long that holds up. Or explaining why they come home from their desk job at NORAD covered in burns and bruises. Or with broken ribs. Or don't come home at all for weeks at a time."

"I know," Sammy says.

"Damn them," Dani says quietly.

"I'm sorry," Sammy says.

"You know, so many people have been saying that to me lately, and it really doesn't seem to help." She gets up, walks into the kitchen, and tosses her ice cream into the trash. Most of it's gone anyway. Rummages around Sammy's kitchen until she finds the Scotch and a glass. Pours herself a nice stiff drink. Grabs the potato chips. Comes back. "Well, cheer up. I've sworn off sex," she says, raising her glass. "Unless Homeworld Security wants to provide me with a male prostitute with a nice high security clearance."

Sammy smiles faintly. "I'll pass that suggestion along."

Dani sits back down and swallows a mouthful of Scotch. "Probably just as well they're letting the Teams fuck each other now, if they're going to be that pissy about a few one-night stands," she says meditatively.

"That's one way of looking at it," Sammy agrees neutrally. "If you throw up on my rug, I'm going to make you clean it up," she adds.

Dani regards the rug. White shag area rug. "I'll buy you a new one. I make more money than you do."

"You do," Sammy agrees.

Dani finishes the Scotch, going for "drunk" rather than "savoring the rich complexity of flavors." It's hitting her harder than she expects, and she wonders why. Then she remembers. No sleep last night. "I'm going to shower. Catch a nap, maybe."

"Sure," Sammy says. "You aren't much for Merchant Ivory, anyway."

Stupid historical movies. Boring. But Sammy likes them. She gets to her feet—unsteady—and walks off to the bathroom.

When she wakes up—only a few hours later; typical—it's evening. Slept through the afternoon, and she'll probably be up half the night now, but it's not as if she's had anything approaching a normal circadian rhythm for years. Gate travel plays hell with it: you leave the SGC at seven in the morning on a summer's day, step through the Stargate, and suddenly it's an autumn noon a hundred thousand light-years away. Or the other way around. And you stay just long enough to start to adjust, and you're back on Earth again. Walking from summer into winter and the other way around; it drives the most primitive part of the brain quietly mad. And sometimes not-so-quietly. That's why most of the Teams have a two-weeks-on-two-weeks-off schedule (when possible), to allow bodies and minds to re-adjust. SG-1 has never had that luxury.

She dresses out of her go-bag—dark-blue sweats—and walks out into the living room. Sammy is sitting on the couch. Wine cooler and popcorn. Dani sits down beside her and helps herself to the popcorn. The television is on. People are driving around in carriages.

"It's almost over," Sammy says reassuringly.

Dani listens for a few minutes. "I don't know where they think they're supposed to be," she says, "but none of those people have the same regional accent. And the guy in the top hat is Welsh."

"This is why I don't watch these with you," Sammy says. "Go make coffee."

Dani gets up and goes into the kitchen. Sammy buys supermarket coffee, but if it's strong enough, it will do. She pokes around in Sammy's refrigerator. Fairly barren, but she finds some cheese and cuts off a slice. Opens the cookies.

She's tired of grieving. She feels as if she's been in mourning her whole life, for a succession of people—parents, friends, lovers—who died, or left her, or betrayed her, or some combination of the three. And she's tired of it. Tired of experiencing it. Of assessing and categorizing each new loss. She told Cam—the conversation seems as if it took place centuries ago; she can't actually remember when it was—that the work they do changes people. Turns them into monsters and freaks, she should have said, and implicit in the conversation was her assumption (unexamined) that she was safe from anything the Gate could do to her, because she'd been both those things before she'd ever set eyes on the Coverstone. And while the first is eternally true, she's not certain any more the second is. She's always been overconfident. She'll drown in strangeness, she thinks bleakly, and _she isn't sure what to do about it._

But then Sammy comes in, and Dani wonders if she's only tired (though that's just as bad as going crazy, all things considered). Because Sammy has been here from the beginning, too, and Sammy's all right. So she pours coffee, and Sammy puts the hot wings in the oven, and they take more ice cream out to thaw (Mint Fudge Chunk for Dani, Bananas Foster for Sammy), and Sammy picks through the cookies (it's an assortment box) to find something she likes, and Dani asks Sammy what _she_ got Cam as an anniversary present, because she's sure Sammy got him _something._

"Oh, something I know he'll love. You know how he's a big _Wormhole X-Treme_ fan?" Dani rolls her eyes. "Well, they just came out with it as a game for Playstation. So I got him that."

Dani thinks about it for a moment. "So... in addition to leading an SG Team through the Gate, he can _play_ leading an SG Team through the Gate?"

"Pretty much. And it comes with a free t-shirt." (Holding on to "normal" as long and as hard as you can.)

"Yeah," Dani says. She pours herself coffee. Sammy regards it, shudders, and makes hers half-and-half coffee and milk. She puts the cup in the microwave to reheat it.

"Staying tonight?" she asks.

"Yeah. I guess."

"Good," Sammy says.

And they eat hot wings and potato chips and more ice cream (out of the carton; the best way) and watch a couple more movies. They're both supposed to be Science Fiction, but they're set on Earth—now—and deal with time-travel. Sammy grouses the entire way through about the paradoxes, and the fact the so-called science is fundamentally flawed. Dani entertains herself by identifying the regional accents. American ones are often difficult: people move around so much, and children learn their English from television as much as from their geographic peers. Still, it's not impossible. And if _she_ were an actor, she'd do a better job of disguising her cultural roots. The lead in the first film is from Philadelphia; his leading lady is from Sussex, England (doing a Midlantic American accent; adequate, but she can't shake her broad "a" sounds). The movie is set somewhere in the Midwest (Indiana, Dani thinks, though half the supporting cast are speaking with a broad Tennessee dialect and the other half seem to think they're in Kentucky). Another of the stars hasn't escaped his Boston roots, while yet a third has the cut-glass nasality of Northern Ohio. It's less annoying when the movie is set in a big city. You hear all sorts of accents in a city. In a rural town everyone is supposed to have lived in all their lives? Not so much.

The second one is better, in the sense it's set in Pittsburgh and contains a lot of irrelevant-to-the-plot male nudity. And car chases. There are times Dani is pretty sure Sammy learned to drive from movies like these. By the end of the second movie, it's a little after midnight. Sammy untangles herself—they're leaning against each other on the couch—and gets up. "July 8th," she says. "I bought you a birthday present. So did Cassie. She's probably going to call tomorrow, and--"

"I won't throw it in your face, Sammy," Dani says. "I know I've got all the social skills of an eight-year-old, but--" They're both just a little, well, _drunk_. But that's what this evening is all about, isn't it? Being like two ordinary women. Normal.

"Only in your personal life, sweetie," Sammy says. "When you're talking to aliens, no one would ever suspect."

"Everybody's an alien," Dani mutters, as Sammy walks off.

She comes back with a big box—large, flat, rectangular—and a little box, both wrapped in bright paper. "The big one's from Cassie," Sammy says. Dani sighs, already suspecting. "It's clothes, isn't it?"

"I didn't ask."

Dani tears the wrapping off, opens the box. Tries not to wince. Okay, it's lovely. For _somebody else_. A white cotton peasant blouse, in the style native to the state of Chiapas, voluminous and heavily-embroidered, white-on-white.

"She thought it would look good with your skirt," Sammy says. As if Dani only owns the one skirt.

"It's pretty," Dani says. Thinking about what Simon said. _"I can't believe I ever called you 'pretty.'"_ The first time he ever saw her, he said: _"I never expected you to be so young. Or so pretty." Well, Simon, we all tell a lot of lies we regret later, don't we?_

Though she's been called "pretty" since Simon. Usually by alien barbarians of one sort or another. Turghan said she was beautiful. Shy'lac said she was enchanting. Aris Boch said he was tempted to keep her for himself. She reaches for the other box. "A little too small for Scotch," she says.

"I thought I'd change things up a bit," Sammy says.

Dani opens it cautiously, determined that whatever it is, Sammy will think she likes it.

Jewelry. A necklace, and Dani can tell just by looking it's set Sammy back by at least as much as the high-end Laphroaig she usually buys. Three blue-enameled lotus blossoms—in the Egyptian style—spaced an inch or so apart on a thin gold chain. She takes it out of the box. Thinking of the Blue Lotus Chamber in the pyramid catacombs on Abydos. A place Sammy never saw—she'd meant to show it to her—and now Sammy never will. "Thank you," she says quietly. "This means a lot to me."

"Do you want to try it on?" Sammy asks. She doesn't sound as if she's quite sure Dani likes it. Dani isn't sure herself, but she told the simple truth: the necklace reminds her of Abydos. She nods, and Sammy works the clasp for her, settling it around her neck. 

"The sweatshirt just kills it," she says. "It's meant to be seen against skin."

Dani gets up and goes to the bathroom to look in the mirror, pulling the neck of the sweatshirt down until the necklace rests against her skin. Gold and blue and bruises. The story of her life, in a snapshot image. She reaches back and undoes the clasp, and walks back out into the living room.

"Looks good," she says. "The bruises just kill it," she adds, and Sammy smiles. She kisses Dani on the cheek, and goes off to bed. And Dani debates between coffee and Scotch, and decides on beer, and surfs Sammy's television through a couple of bottles (she's thought about buying a television for herself, but she's never really seen a good reason to. And there's no place for one in the living room now), and goes off to bed herself.

Her sleep is restless, but adequate.

In the morning, Sammy makes them both eggs and toast. Sammy keeps bread in the freezer; it dries out after a couple of months of incarceration, but at least it lasts that long. The eggs are recent. She says she has a few chores to catch up on before heading over to Cam's; she'll pick up Teal'c on her way. The unspoken question hovers: will Dani be there? Dani shrugs, deflecting it. "I've got chores to catch up on. I'll let you know."

#

She stops by the Post Office on her way home. It's not really on the way, but it's necessary. She's rented the largest box they have, and she still has to call at the window for the overflow. Why are people always sending her mail? She pays her bills on-line, she's done with the damned lawyer. Can't they make junk mail illegal? She throws half of it away in the Post Office, stuffs the rest into her backpack, and drives home.

She told Sammy she had chores to do, so she does, searching the house for laundry (it piles up in the oddest places), searching her closet for things that need to be dry-cleaned (nothing much, but a few items should go; she pulls them out). As the laundry cycles through—washer to dryer to folded in baskets and carried back to its proper places—she empties her refrigerator and makes do-lists. Speak to the landscaping people. Go to the grocery. Get the truck and the Jeep serviced. Does she really need to keep both? Convenient sometimes, but keeping up two vehicles is a lot of work. The expense doesn't bother her, but there are never enough hours in the day when she's on Earth. _"Every working woman needs a wife."_ One of Sammy's favorite sayings. But if dating is impossible, marriage is just as fraught. The divorce rate among the members of the Gate Teams who are married is high, between job-stress and secrecy. Though not the secrecy so much, Dani thinks. Military wives—and husbands—are used to that. Hard, though, not to be able to be honest with someone you love.

She pokes, tidies, makes lists. Pulls the mail out of her backpack and sorts it. A lot of professional journals. She's behind in her reading.

And then it's the middle of the afternoon, and she knows the others are all at Cam's. Celebrating (better late than never) the anniversary of his arrival on SG-1. He's made it through a year.

_'Gate Team mortality in the first year averages fifty percent. Most Gate Teams do not survive a two-year tour of duty with their original roster intact.'_

A report she once read. It concealed as much as it revealed: the SGC loses twenty percent of its Gate Teams—one in five—during their first three months of duty. Loses, in the sense that all the members are killed, or go MIA, never to be seen again. A net loss to the US Government of approximately three million dollars per four-person team. In the first six months of service, fifty percent of all Gate Teams will lose at least one member. This includes deaths, injuries (physical, mental) severe enough that the individual has to be removed from active duty, and requests for reassignment. In the first year of duty, fifteen percent of all Gate Team members request transfer to another Team. The requests are easy to fill, between deaths and reassignments. But a request for transfer is a warning sign. Half of the people who request a transfer are killed within the next twelve months. The concept of a "tour of duty," like so much else in the report, is a pleasant fiction for bureaucrats who don't know the reality of what they do at the SGC. When you join the Gate Teams, you join until you die, or you crack, or you're invalided off. The qualities required—between skills, temperament, and security clearance—are rare enough that they can't just keep rotating people in and out. The Stargate Program is a deep secret, and Gate Teams are expensive to train.

And SG-1 beat all the odds for seven years. Then lost two members in accordance with the statistical model, though Jennifer Hailey is still alive, and a Captain now. And now they have Cam. So far he's beaten the odds: twelve months and he's still alive, and whole, and sane (and so, more or less, are they). She doesn't believe in luck, but he's still their luck. It's not right, not fair, she not be with SG-1 today.

She brought her go-bag into the house with her; she always does after she's used it. She goes through it carefully and repacks it; fresh underwear, clean sweats. She's ready to go, standing at her kitchen door (on her way to the garage), when a thought strikes her. Cam's celebration, but her birthday, too. She isn't happy, but she owes the others—her teammates—reassurance. As much as she can give. She goes back into the bedroom. It will entertain her, a little, to surprise them.

Cassie's skirt (she thinks of it as Cassie's, not hers, even now) comes off its hanger. Cassie's blouse comes out of its box. They're a good match; she looks like an expensive peasant whose husband beats her. She regards herself in her dresser mirror. She doesn't look like Dani. Not any of the Danis she knows: not the hooker in glossy dresses, not the negotiator in severe business suits, not the soldier in BDUs. Someone different.

She picks up Sammy's necklace. The neckline of the blouse is low enough for it to rest against her skin. It will call attention to the bruises more than hide them—they're turning purple-green now; they'll be yellow-brown in a few days, then gone—but maybe Sammy will appreciate the gesture. She clasps it around her neck, fumbling awkwardly with the catch. It gleams against her skin.

No gold sandals this time. She'll go for safety and comfort. Her Birkenstocks.

She picks up her go-bag and her backpack and goes out to her Jeep.

#

Months ago, Cam gave her a key to his apartment. She uses it now; a small exercise of territoriality. She hears laughter from the kitchen: Cam and Sammy. Teal'c is on the couch, engrossed in Playstation violence. She finds his fascination with the violent games odd, considering his past. Does he like them _because_ the violence is so unreal? Or because they remind him of real violence? Oh, there's an unsettling thought. He's always said—and believably—he loathes the acts he was forced to commit as First Prime to Apophis, but on the other hand, she's seen him half out of his mind with the desire for _kel'mar_. The Jaffa take revenge very seriously. They're not so big on forgiveness. Not really that surprising. Of course, the _Tok'ra_ aren't inclined to let bygones be bygones either. Maybe "forgiveness" is an aberration of the _Tau'ri_ , nurtured by their millennia of isolation from the rest of the galaxy and the rule of the _Goa'uld_. That's a chilling thought.

She sets her bags down. Teal'c pauses the game and looks over at her.

"Danielle Jackson. I am pleased you have chosen to join us this day."

"Yeah, I thought ... Cam's still alive, you know?"

Teal'c will know exactly what she means. He inclines his head gravely. "To survive—and to live well—is often the greatest victory a warrior can claim."

"Done the one," she says. "Are you winning?"

"Indeed. I am kicking much ass."

She snorts with amusement. Teal'c always manages to make his forays into the vernacular sound completely ridiculous. She suspects he does it on purpose. She waves a hand. "Go. Kick."

Teal'c nods, and the game resumes.

"Hey, hey, hey. Look who's here," Cam says, wandering out of the kitchen. "You eat? There's pizza."

"You made pizza?"

Cam grins at her. "I _ordered_ pizza, on account of a crazy woman has taken over my kitchen and won't let me in there."

"I heard that!" Sammy calls. "Is that Dani?"

Dani walks past Cam into the kitchen. There are tools all over the floor. There's a mounting bracket for the television up under one of the cupboards, but the television set is still on the counter, and Sammy has her head under the sink.

"No," she says.

Sammy uncoils herself from beneath the sink and sits up. She stares.

"Holy Hannah," she says. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Not too stiff," Dani says innocently. "I figured, you know, Cassie was going to call..."

"She's nine hours ahead of us—I talked to her a little earlier. Why don't we give her another call? She should still be up."

Dani glances at her watch. Does the math. "It's after midnight?"

"She's young." Sammy pulls out her cell, and makes the call. A pause, then Cassie answers. "Dani's here," Sammy says. "She wants to say "hi.'"

Dani takes the phone. "Cassie?"

"Aunt Dani! Happy Birthday! What time is it?"

"A little after three." There's noise in the background where Cassie is. People. Laughter. "And obviously you aren't home in bed."

Cassie giggles. "No. Did you like your present?"

"I'm wearing it now."

"Really? Can I see?"

"I think so." Sammy's phone will send pictures. Dani holds it out to Sammy. "Take a picture," she says. Sammy nods, takes a picture of Dani, sends it to Cassie's phone. The wonders of modern technology. She hands the phone back. Dani puts it to her ear. "Did you get it?"

"I ... yes!" Cassie squeals with delight, and Dani winces. "Oh! And the skirt! What's around your neck?"

"Sammy gave me a necklace. It's pretty. You can see it when you come back."

"Oh, I miss you, Aunt Dani! What else did you get?"

"Haven't gotten them yet. You sound like you're at a party?"

"A club. Not yet?"

"Just got here. Why don't I let you get back to your ... clubbing. Cam has pizza, and I'm on Sammy's phone."

"Kay! I'll email you soon! I have pictures! I've got a bike! Happy Birthday!"

"Goodbye, Cassie." She closes the phone, hands it back to Sammy. "At a club," she says.

Sammy sighs. "I'm not going to think about that." She slides under the sink again. "Hand me the drill, somebody."

Dani hands Sammy the drill, and Cam points Dani toward the pizza. She sorts through the boxes until she finds a kind she likes. There's a sound of drilling.

"Okay, good, got it," Sammy says, coming out again.

"Can I have my kitchen back?" Cam asks plaintively.

"Soon."

It's another hour, though, before Sammy's finished, running yards of cable from the living room into the kitchen (around the baseboard and doorframe) and through small neat holes drilled into the half-wall dividing the kitchen from the living room. Dani watches, oddly fascinated, holding the cable as Sammy staples it into place, handing her tools. Cam does everything that involves kneeling and crawling, though: she's wearing a skirt.

Then one last hole—in the counter-top, and the cable is connected to the television set. Sammy slips it into its mounting brackets and tightens the bolts that hold it in place. Cam plugs it in and switches it on.

"And ... we have picture!" He hugs Sammy.

"Now you'll never have to leave your kitchen again," Sammy says.

"Well, for one or two things," he says. "But ... yeah."

And Sammy packs up her tools and the odds and ends of cable and wire, and Cam vacuums up the debris in the kitchen, and wipes down the counter tops, and consolidates the last of the pizza into one box.

"So what's for dinner?" Sammy asks.

"Thought I might let you starve," Cam says cheerfully. Sammy laughs disbelievingly, and elbows him in the ribs.

Dani likes the fact they're happy. That they aren't tip-toeing around her, treating her like something fragile. Yes, they all know about Abydos. But it's her loss, not—exactly—theirs. Seeing them happy—able to be happy—doesn't make it worse. A little better, maybe.

She wanders back to the living room. Teal'c is watching QVC now. She sits down on the couch and curls up next to him. He puts an arm around her. "Was Colonel Carter successful in her installation of the device?" he asks.

"Oh, yeah. Now Cam can make meatballs and watch football at the same time," she says.

"I believe this is baseball season," Teal'c answers.

"Is it?"

Sammy joins them a few minutes later. "Hamburgers, potato salad, and cole slaw," she announces.

"A traditional seasonal menu," Teal'c says. "I shall be happy to assist Colonel Mitchell with the preparation of the cole slaw."

"I'm sure he'll appreciate that, Teal'c," Sammy says.

"No dessert?" Dani asks.

"Cake and ice cream," Sammy says.

Cam comes out into the living room. "Those potatoes aren't going to wash themselves," he announces.

Dani gets to her feet. "I'll do it." She walks into the kitchen, rolling up her sleeves. There's a sack of potatoes on the counter. Two pots of water are already heating on the stove. "How many?" she asks.

"We've got Teal'c to feed. Better do the whole bag."

She opens the bag, sets potatoes into the sink, turns on the tap, reaches into a drawer for the brush. She's done this before. "How are your bruises?" she asks. "Sammy said you were limping yesterday."

"Not too bad today. Looks like I caught you a good one, though."

She's surprised for a moment, then realizes he can see her legs. The skirt comes to mid-calf, but the bruise—on her right leg—is low. "You did."

As each potato is cleaned, she sets it on a towel on the counter. The process reminds her—just a little—of cleaning artifacts at a dig site. Something she hasn't done in years, and may never do again. Cam is sitting on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, knees spread around a paper bag. He selects a potato, inspects it, and begins to peel it with quick elegant motions.

"Sam wasn't sure you'd come," he says.

"Your day," she answers, and hears him sigh, just a little. Too much, too little, for words to express. She's not really sure what to say. _"I'm glad you're not dead?"_ He's probably glad too.

"Glad you're here," he says.

"Yes," she answers. "Sammy told me just why that is."

The quality of the silence behind her is—perhaps—a little baffled now. But she's angry enough—at the world, at the lives they lead—not to care. Unstable? Oh, just a bit; she thinks she's entitled right now. Happy—or at least calm—a moment ago, furious now, and even she can't say what set her off. Not Cam, at least she doesn't think so. What Sammy told her last night? Maybe. She lives her life under the eyes of security cameras—office, halls, Commissary, Infirmary, everywhere she goes inside the SGC. And also (so she knows now) under constant security review. Her life is an open book, read by stupid and hostile strangers who have no understanding of why she might want to do the things she does.

"It's your birthday," Cam finally says. As if he's continuing the conversation. The answer to why he's glad she's here. Because it's her birthday, not because he's afraid that—otherwise—she'd be whoring herself around the bars of Colorado Springs.

She washes potatoes. "Yes."

Eventually all the potatoes are scrubbed. She takes another chair, and a fresh towel, and a knife, and sits down across from Cam. Helping to peel. He's intent on his work, watching his hands. They work in silence, stopping only to put the peeled potatoes on the counter and collect new ones. Finally all the potatoes—three pounds—are peeled. He goes to the counter and drops them gently, one by one, into the boiling water.

"Cook 'em up, cool 'em down, chunk 'em, it's done." He gets out another pot.

"That's not everything," she says.

"Not quite. You want to get out the eggs?"

She opens the refrigerator, brings out a carton of eggs. His refrigerator looks emptier than usual. "You need to shop."

"I do that," he says. "Tomorrow."

She sets the eggs on the counter. There's another pan on the stove now. He sets eggs into it. Gently. "You want to send my man Teal'c in here?" he asks. "Time to get that slaw started."

She goes off to the living room, tells Teal'c it's time for him to earn his keep. For the next couple of hours, the three of them rotate in and out of the kitchen. The only time all three of them are back in the living room is when Cam is putting together the Secret Dressing for the potato salad. Sammy and Teal'c play cards; Dani digs out one of her journals and reads. The television plays on in the background. Occasionally one of them changes the channel.

And eventually Cam says the hamburgers are about to go on and if Sam doesn't come and set the table, they're all going to have to eat off the floor, and Sammy gets up off the couch (she's losing anyway) and bitches that after all the work she's done today, she shouldn't have to do more, and Cam says it's a great life if you don't weaken, and Sammy laughs and walks into the kitchen.

#

"Okay," Cam says, once they've put the dishes into the dishwasher. "I think I've been pretty damned patient."

Dani looks at him, puzzled. Sammy grins. "We were just wondering how long it would take you to crack."

"Oh, I'm cracked. Hand 'em over."

Sammy glances at Teal'c. He bows, and walks back to the bedroom, returning a few minutes later with two packages. Wrapped. One big, one little. Dani knows what Sammy got Cam. That has to be the little box. What's the other one?

"Open Teal'c's first," Sammy says, so Cam does.

"A pizzelle maker," Cam says. He sounds really pleased.

"Indeed, Colonel Mitchell. I perceived you did not possess this appliance. It can be used to create a number of tasty traditional delicacies. Recipes are included."

"Hey. Can't wait to try this out," Cam says. He inspects the box. "Says here you can make waffle cones with it."

"Indeed?" Teal'c says, trying to sound innocent. "I was not aware."

Cam laughs. "Oh, we are so going to town with this puppy. Home made ice cream. Home made ice cream _cones_." He reaches for the other package. "Hm. Squishy."

"Well, open it," Sammy says, but Cam teases her for a while longer, making outrageous guesses as to what it might be, until Sammy tries to snatch the package out of his hands. In the struggle, the paper is ripped. Cam then gives in and finishes the job. 

_"Samantha_ ," he says. Chiding and amused and oh, just a little awestruck all at once.

"Put on the t-shirt," Sammy says. And he skins out of the t-shirt he's wearing—right there—and pulls on the _Wormhole X-treme_ shirt. Bright grape-jelly purple, with the show logo in glitter green and silver across the front. He looks ridiculous.

"I have _got_ to play this," he says, waving the game. "But, ah, I'm not the only one getting presents. Right?"

She looks up. A little wary. But it's true. She's only received Sammy's and Cassie's presents so far. Cam's and Teal'c's—like punishments yet to fall—are still to come.

"Okay," she says, making her tone light, standing up and turning away. "What did you get me?" Her face, people have said, can't lie, but her voice can. Tone and pitch and modulation are all aspects of dialect; she's expert there.

"Let's go into the living room," Cam says, and so they do.

Her presents, like Cam's, have been stored in the bedroom. Teal'c's is first; Cam hasn't brought his out yet. The box is large—a bit bigger than a loaf of bread—but lightweight. She shakes it gently. She has no clue. At least it won't be clothes; she knows that much. She opens it. Tissue paper. She pulls the tissue aside, sees toffee-colored plush. At first she thinks, _stuffed animal_ , but then she pulls it out, and sees that there are two. Identical.

Bedroom slippers. And not just _any_ bedroom slippers, but bedroom slippers with the head of King Tut on the toe, in gold lamé appliqué glory. Where the hell does he _find_ these things? She looks up. "Thank you, Teal'c. They are not only suitable, but practical. And I needed new slippers." It's true. Her other ones are nearly worn out. She doesn't really think Teal'c goes through her closet, but he seems to have an instinct for these things anyway.

She looks around, but Cam isn't here. No, wait. He's coming out of the bedroom. Carrying a large—squishy—package in his arms. "This was pretty hard to wrap," he says. "But I guess it don't need to stay wrapped long."

She sets the slippers back into their box, and sets the box aside. Cam sets his package onto her lap. She tears off the paper. Knitting. Lime green and turquoise and black and purple and brown. The colors shouldn't go together but—somehow—they do. She unfolds it, thinking _scarf_ and _sweater_ and wondering why Cam would give her either of those things, but he hasn't. It's an afghan. The pattern is familiar, and she glances at the back of the couch, but no, Cam's Grand'ma's afghan (lime and orange and sage green and yellow and brown and pink) is still there.

There's something here she doesn't understand.

"Always sleep better under something someone made with love," Cam says, shrugging.

"I ... thank you," she says, knowing she sounds more puzzled than grateful, and that isn't right, and she's sorry; she sketches her apology in the air, and Cam smiles. But she's still confused.

Later, she overhears Sammy and Cam talking. They're in the kitchen, dishing up dessert. And Sammy says: "How come _I_ never got one of those?", and Cam answers (Dani can hear the shrug in his voice) that Sammy has to negotiate her _own_ knitting with the family.

The afghan is handmade by a member of Cam's family.

All gifts are a form of communication, a language of symbol. Figuring out what they're saying is the tricky part. Sammy and Cam were lovers. Cam never gave Sammy an afghan. Cam gave _her_ an afghan. She and Cam aren't lovers.

Never will be.

She's quiet through the rest of the evening, promising herself she'll leave in another five minutes. And five minutes more. And five minutes after that. And she doesn't. Not through cake and coffee and second rounds of cake, or the shakedown cruise of the _Wormhole X-Treme_ game (Cam plays with Teal'c), or even when Sammy gets up and says she really needs to get going and take Teal'c back to the Base. That's when Cam gets out the Scotch and the bourbon and brings the two filled glasses to the couch—she hasn't said a word for hours—and hands her her glass and touches his to hers.

"Made it through another one," he says, and when he says the words he isn't making a joke of them. There's no humor in his voice. He's just quiet. Giving her truth. She's here, she's breathing, that's the definition of _made it through_. So she nods.

She ought to leave, but she can't bring herself to. And after she's drunk the Scotch, she can't, really. She knew it when she took the glass, and she took it anyway. She wants to stay. Wants to be here. A haven—him, the place he is—and is it only because she knows she's hurting him by dangling herself just out of reach? She doesn't want to be that person. But that's the person she is. Just as destructive—self-destructive—to be here as off to the bars, really. But Sammy prefers this? She said so. But Sammy loves Cam. If Sammy—if _Cam_ —prefers she do this than that, they're both crazy.

And she's here. So they're all crazy. Well, that's what the job does. She's known that for a while.

They finish their drinks. Cam goes to bring out the sheet and pillow to make up the couch, just as he's done every other time (almost every other time) she's slept here. It's not so many, not really, but each occasion carries such weight, making a history of "them," of Things Cam and Dani Do Together, and she's not sure she wants that. Or she's sure that she doesn't want it, but somehow she can't stop writing it anyway. She claims the bathroom, temporarily; washes up and changes clothes. Comes back. Beds down under Cam's Grand'ma's afghan, though now—when she goes home—she'll have an afghan of her own, made by some Mitchell relative, to sleep under. She wonders if Cam's right. If it will make a difference. It can't possibly. That's superstition, magical thinking, it has no place in the modern world. The real world. (Though her world seems unreal as often as not.)

She wonders why he gave it to her. A dozen possible reasons—some plausible, some not, all disturbing for one reason or another—suggest themselves. She sorts through them in her mind, unable to decide, until she falls asleep.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extensive spear-carrier death among the Kelownans. Explicit PTSD (Cam). Abuse (verbal and physical) between Dani and Simon Gardner. Explicit depiction of Simon's PTSD. Obscenity. PTSD FOR EVERYBODY!


	8. JULY 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Landry makes a bad decision. SG-1 goes to a funeral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter specific warnings.

She wakes up in the middle of the night. Starkly, painfully awake, alert as she never is first thing in the morning. A nightmare bad enough to wake her up but not bad enough to make her scream. Her thoughts are filled with blood and ashes.

She tells herself she doesn't remember what she dreams. She tries to believe it, now and always. Unquiet images of Abydos, Anubis, Kelowna, _Cam,_ roil and mingle in her thoughts. She needs an endgame. An exit strategy. She doesn't know whether she's Ariadne or Theseus—or even the Minotaur—but she knows she's trapped in a labyrinth and she wants _out_.

She gets up off the couch. The lights from the parking lot filter in through the living room drapes. Enough light to show her the way. She strips, piling her sweats on the couch, and pads into the bedroom. She's tired of ambiguity, of kindness. She's going to settle matters once and for all.

Cam is awake before she finishes getting into his bed. If he hadn't had that reflex before, he's certainly had time to develop it in the last year. There's just enough light in here—the same light as in the living room, filtering through the same curtains—to show her his outline. Bare shoulders.

"Fuck me," she says harshly, pulling the covers up over herself. If he wasn't awake before, that should do it.

"No," he says. There's neither regret nor disapproval in his voice; he's merely disagreeing. "When we do this—if we do—we're going to make love."

She flushes, unseen in the darkness. Anger, humiliation. Does he want her or not? She's so tired of being confused. She sits up. Back to the couch, then.

He reaches out, unerringly, the lightest brush of fingertips against her shoulder. "You might as well stay," he says, sounding—unbelievable but true—amused. "Bed's more comfortable than the couch." He lies down and turns over, obviously going back to sleep. Apparently not at all concerned by her presence.

She hates being manipulated. _Hates_ it. But if she leaves now, she loses points. Even though she suspects she's the only one playing. Or keeping score. He knows that. And she still can't bring herself to leave. And lose on points. So she lies down. Warmer than the couch (something she cares about, even in July). Softer, too.

The sound of his steady breathing lulls her to back to sleep.

#

She wakes up in the night—once more—but not because of a nightmare. Cam has rolled over; one arm is flung across her back (she sleeps on her stomach, bad as it is for her allergies), and his face is pressed against her hair. He's breathing heavily in sleep.

And normally the lightest touch is enough to start her thrashing, fighting to defend herself, but she isn't even really all the way awake. Just enough to recognize: _Cam_. Familiar scent, familiar sound, familiar touch. And though the nightmares always, _always_ , come in chains, there hasn't been another one. 

She goes back to sleep.

#

In the morning she wakes—late—to find her sweats piled neatly at the foot of the bed. Her go-bag is there, too. She gets up, washes, dresses. Makes the bed, out of a faint desire to eradicate all trace of what happened in the night. Whatever it was.

She made a pass at Cam. Cam turned her down.

Not because he doesn't want her. But because he wants _more_ from her. She understands that. She has for a while. The trouble is, he wants something that doesn't exist, and that's a paradox of a sort, because she knows Cam is smart about people. If you're smart about people, you don't misread them that badly.

Nevertheless.

Her behavior makes more sense than his, at least in her opinion; the usual flirtation with self-destruction: nice to have it out onto the conscious level, and she'd better find a new displacement mechanism soon. All things considered, it wasn't much of a pass, really. She's done better work. She was angry—still is—and frightened (because the dreams always do that to her) and wanted to lash out. Fortunately he's smarter than she is, in ways that really matter. She supposes she should go out there now, let him tell her off and throw her out.

He doesn't, of course. He feeds her: eggs and sausage and biscuits and home fries and gravy. Gravy (she has learned) is apparently a separate line-item on the Southern menu: thick and spicy and creamy (often) and served up on every possible occasion (always). He doesn't mention the fact she slept naked in his bed last night, and neither does she. She's not sure why. Something like that should...echo. But it doesn't.

She wonders if she's just too emotionally drained to be able to sense what's actually there. She isn't sure. So she helps him with his laundry. Little chores. Normalcy. He talks—idly—about going grocery shopping, paying bills, finding time to get his car in for servicing. As if they were ordinary people.

"Neshaat was going to have a baby," she blurts out as they're pairing and folding socks. It seems random. It isn't. "Skaara's wife. Their first."

"I'm sorry," Cam says. "I know that's not much comfort."

And suddenly she's talking and she _can't stop_ , about how Neshaat was Sha're's cousin (not Skaara's; Sha're and Skaara had different mothers) and how everybody had hoped the two of them (Skaara and Neshaat) would marry for years, and how Neshaat brought an excellent dowry: ten goats, and two fine _mastaadge_ , dozens of ells of cloth she wove herself; six large carpets, and many fine baskets as well. When Skaara was taken by the gods (the _Goa'uld_ ), everyone had thought Neshaat was cursed by ill-fortune, but Kasuf had taken her into his household, and then Skaara had returned, and she had been thought as lucky as she had previously been thought unlucky, and all the young men of Nagada had vied for her favor, since there had been no betrothal agreement in place before Skaara was taken, but she had chosen Skaara, even though he had been touched by the gods, whom the Abydans now knew to be false and evil. And the two of them made _sha'loqui_ , and there was two weeks of feasting and dancing and celebration in Nagada, for with Skaara's marriage, everyone knew the royal line would continue…

Finally she stops. There's nothing more to say. She feels hollow. Empty. She looks down at the socks in her hands, then up at Cam.

"You did the very best you could," he says quietly. "It wasn't enough. Sometimes it isn't. Not because you're bad, or stupid, or because you didn't try. But because the bad guys had bigger guns that day. I'm the last guy in the world to be saying this to you, baby, but I've gotta say it anyway. If you let what they did break you, they win for all time."

"They were my _family,_ Cam," she whispers. "They loved me."

"I know they did," he answers. "And you loved them." He takes the socks out of her hand and tosses them into the basket. Takes another step closer and puts his arms around her. She leans against him.

"Do you think...?" she asks. Hating that she needs to. Wanting to believe what he tells her.

"I think it was quick, baby girl," he answers. "I think it was real damn quick."

She nods. Head against his chest. He isn't lying. Cam wouldn't do that to her. If he didn't think it was quick, he wouldn't answer. Or he'd say he didn't know. But they both saw Kelowna, and Anubis's weapon wasn't even firing at full power there. Cities vaporized in an instant. The way Nagada, Kalima, Ra's pyramid must have been. 

It's just that sometimes you need to hear the truth from someone else before you can believe it. Before you can start to heal. She'll carry the scars of what Anubis has done to her until the day she dies, but now, at least, she isn't bleeding out minute by minute, day by day. Dying alongside Abydos.

And they finish folding his laundry, and she says she has some things left to do at her place, and he asks if he can pick up anything at the store for her, and she gives him a list.

#

She's driving home when her phone rings, and she flips it on, not bothering to check who's calling, because it's Saturday and they aren't supposed to be back at the Mountain until Monday. "What did you forget?" she says.

"Doctor Jackson?" It's General Landry. Himself. Not Graham.

"Sir," she says, taking a deep breath to steady herself, because when Landry calls—when General Hammond called—it's always urgent, and "urgent," in their world, means there's a disaster. Anubis. He must have surfaced again. Or maybe Yu has finally showed up at Kelowna. That would be ironic. For values of "ironic" involving mass murder.

"I'm sorry to bother you on your downtime," he says, which only puzzles her. Aren't people dying somewhere? "But a situation has come up here, and I need you to come in. It shouldn't take long."

"Yes, sir," she says. "I'm on my way." She doesn't ask for details. Not over an open line. But she sets her phone into its carrier, puts it on hands-free, and her next call is to Cam.

"Boss called me in to work," she says when he answers. "Don't know when I'll be back."

"He didn't call me," Cam says. She knows. Landry would have called Cam, and Cam would have rounded her and Sammy up, if this were something he needed SG-1 for, which obviously it isn't, but in that case...what?

"He said it wouldn't take long," she says, doubtfully, because—in her experience—something important enough to yank her off downtime isn't likely to be resolved in just a few minutes. "I really need to get you a key to my place." She can't remember at this exact moment whether Sammy has one or not. She knows Sammy had one to her apartment. But to the house? She can't remember. And she didn't want Cam sitting in her driveway with a car full of perishables wondering where the hell she'd gotten to.

"I'll meet you there," Cam says.

"Will it do me any good to tell you not to?"

"Not really."

"Fine." He's probably going to call Sammy the moment she cuts the connection. And so much for their seventy-two.

#

She gets a few odd looks on her way down to the Changing Rooms, and it finally occurs to her she's shown up at the SGC dressed as a Mesoamerican peasant. At least, at mid-shift, she's able to shave about fifteen minutes off of her usual time. She figures Cam has got to be at least ten minutes behind her. The race is to the swift. She knocks on General Landry's door. (He always keeps it closed. General Hammond never did.)

He demands to know who it is. She opens it. "You sent for me, sir?"

"Doctor Jackson. Sit down."

This is not good. Landry's never seen any reason to coax and cosset and coddle her at all, something that should charm her more than it ever has. The SGC's heading into its third year of General Landry now; by this time with General Hammond, she knew his daughter and his granddaughters and went to his house for Thanksgiving dinner and had drinks (along with half the SGC) at his house on Christmas Eve. She doesn't even know where Landry lives.

She sits.

"You're Colonel O'Neill's executor, as I recall?"

It's a jarring opening gambit. Jack died just five months ago. His body hasn't been released for burial yet. Her last task: to see him buried next to Charlie. She nods.

"The Asgard have made a...rather unusual request. But I'll let Thor ask you in person." He presses a device on his desk. She can just glimpse it from where she's sitting. Asgard technology.

There's a flash of blinding white light, and Thor is standing in General Landry's office. His ship must be in orbit. "Doctor Jackson. It is good to see you again."

She gets to her feet. She towers over him, but it's protocol. She takes his outstretched hand. The Asgard don't shake hands as a greeting—she's fairly sure—but they've learned the custom from humans. Thor's fingers are limp and clammy in hers.

"It's good to see you, too, Commander Thor." She sits down again, bringing herself closer to his eye-level. Thor remains standing. The Asgard _can_ sit, but the chairs in General Landry's office aren't scaled for Asgard bodies. "How can I assist you today?"

Thor inclines his head. "General Landry has told me you are the owner of Colonel O'Neill's remains."

She blinks. "Ah, well, in a sense. Under our legal system. Yes."

"You intend to bury them in the ground."

Asgard voices are difficult to read. She has no idea what Thor thinks about this idea. For that matter, the Asgard have never told them what they do with their worn-out clone bodies. They could _eat_ them for all she knows.

"There are many customs on Earth for the final disposition of the dead," she says cautiously. "It is customary for the living to leave instructions for their survivors to follow."

"Yet these can be disregarded?" Thor asks. He regards her unblinkingly.

"If it is a matter of...sufficient necessity," she says carefully. What the hell does he _want?_

"The Asgard High Council has requested I ask you to surrender custody of Colonel O'Neill's body to us," Thor says.

"Why?" she asks bluntly. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees General Landry frown.

"Colonel O'Neill interfaced with the Ancient library. We believe his body contains much information of value. It can still be extracted through the use of our technology," Thor answers.

"You aren't going to clone him?" she asks sharply. Because there's a clone of Jack out there. Somewhere. Jack made it vanish, about three months before Janet died, and in the first months after he was frozen she turned his personal papers inside out, and she and Sammy searched the records at the SGC, and neither of them have ever been able to find any trace of it. What he'd done with it. Where it might be now. Even General Hammond didn't know—or said he didn't, and that amounts to the same thing. He'd left, so he said, the disposition of the clone entirely in Jack's hands, and Jack is dead, and whatever he did to hide his _doppelganger,_ he did it too well. The clone should be—physically—about eighteen now. Able to vanish anywhere, and probably unaware it's the only Jack O'Neill left.

Thor shakes his head. "No, Doctor Jackson. We only wish to extract information at the cellular level."

She looks at Landry. "Why do you need me?" This is the goddamned US Government. _Oh, please. The Pentagon has lost whole continents._ She hears Jack's voice in her mind.

"It's a matter of paperwork," Landry says. "We'll provide the Asgard with Colonel O'Neill's body. You sign the appropriate forms stating it's in the coffin that will be buried at the cemetery. Since you would—under normal circumstances—have to identify the body..." Landry actually has the good grace not to continue. She wonders if there's actually an identifiable body at this point. She wonders if there's anything left the Asgard can use.

Why aren't they all talking about Anubis? Surely Landry's mentioned he's back. She knows the Asgard are stretched pretty thin, but they should at least be willing to share any information they have. And there's the matter of Anubis's new superweapon. The Asgard need to know about it.

"General Landry, while Commander Thor is here shouldn't we—"

"We've already had the body transferred back to the SGC." General Landry says. "If you'll just take this locator beacon down to the morgue and place it on the coffin, Commander Thor can beam it up to his ship. The Legal Department will get you the paperwork in the next few days, and you can arrange the funeral at your convenience."

She stares at him. He stares at her. "I'm always delighted to cooperate with our offworld allies," she finally says. Thor may miss the irony in her voice, but she doubts Landry does. The frown gets darker, but what can he say? She's cooperating.

"Good," Landry says. 

It's official. Landry doesn't like her, and she doesn't like him. What was the last straw? Kelowna? But they got _naquadriaah_ out of the deal; he should be happy. She takes the small crystal device—it's odd that Asgard technology looks so much like scarabs—and gets to her feet. "Commander Thor. Always a pleasure." She's out of Landry's office before the flash of white light fades. Cam is leaning against the wall outside. How could she have doubted where he'd be? The man is as predictable as _gravity_. He raises his eyebrows. She smiles. It's probably not very convincing. "We've just sold Jack's body to the Asgard." She walks off. Of course he follows.

"Uh... you want to explain that to me?"

"Oh, it's not as if any money actually changes hands. I'm fairly sure the Asgard don't use money. But they're giving us all those shields and hyperdrives and beaming technology. So obviously we have to be giving them something in exchange."

"And they want...?"

"The body. General Landry has told me I can bury an empty coffin at my convenience. But it's much easier for everybody if I'm in on the cover-up. That's why he called me in."

Cam says nothing. They enter the elevator. She pushes buttons. The morgue is on Level 21, the same floor as the Infirmary. Fewer corpses in the elevator that way. People come back from missions and die. It happens. People bring dead bodies back through the Gate. That happens, too. In both cases, they end up here. The morgue.

The doors open. The two of them walk down the hall.

Three tables. Not a lot, but there's a high turnover; bodies are quickly transferred out to the regular facility over at the Academy Hospital—this is just a temporary holding zone. They can do autopsies in here, too, when they have to. All the tables are empty at the moment, but there's a casket on a gurney. Not a traditional funerary casket, but one of the hazmat containers the SGC uses to transport potentially-contaminated bodies, living or dead, through the Gate. The faceplate is usually clear. This one's opaque.

"Is this Colonel O'Neill's body?" she asks the corpsman on duty.

"Yeah," he says idly. "They just brought it in a couple of hours ago. I don't know—" He looks up in the middle of the sentence and realizes who he's talking to. Stops.

She sets the locator beacon on top of the coffin. For a moment she has an insane urge to open the container, see what's inside. Unfair to have to keep saying goodbye, over and over and over again. Instead she activates the locator beacon and steps back. Lights blink deep inside the crystal: pink, green. There's a flash of light, and the gurney is empty.

She looks around. The corpsman is flattened back against the wall, eyes wide. "Show's over," she says briefly. She walks out, and Cam follows. Down three levels to her office. In. She leans against her worktable. "So that's what he wanted," she says, as if continuing a conversation.

"And he had to call you in today."

Cam is angry. She's seen Cam angry before. At her—memorably. At events beyond his control, now and then. At the injury and death of Bryce Ferguson. She usually has some idea of what's set him off. Not really this time. But he's white around the mouth, and—oh, god—he sounds as if he's from _Boston._

"Thor was here now," she says.

"That is not the point," he says. He looks as if he wants to pace. She wonders why he doesn't. 

She goes over to her chair and sits down; Cam takes her place against the table. "It doesn't matter," she says.

"He had no right to do that to you," Cam says.

"Thor is our ally. We owe the Asgard cooperation," she says. "The High Council isn't exactly...whimsical."

"He could have gotten someone else," Cam says, and she realizes they're talking at cross-purposes. Having two different conversations. She looks up. Cam is staring off into space. Not seeing her, or the room. It's a little disturbing. Cam is always _there._

"He had to be sure I'd sign the papers," she says. A conversational fishing expedition.

"He could have gotten Walter to do it," Cam says, still in that tight, hard, _Boston_ voice, and now it's clear. Not to sign papers, or agree to sign them. To place the beacon. See the coffin. That's what this was about. And even knowing what doesn't tell her why. "It's okay, Cam," she says. Lying.

"It is _not,_ " he says, turning to face her, and his eyes are blazing blue. She can't meet them. She looks down at her hands. He says something else, low. Not meant for her to hear, but she hears it anyway. _You deserve his respect._

_"They deserve your respect. You will honor their memory."_

_Was_ it a gesture of contempt? No, she thinks Cam's wrong there. It was a show of force. Landry attempting to bring her to heel again. That's awkward; she's already about as "at heel" as she's ever going to get, and if it's not sufficient, there's not really much more she's willing—or able—to do. She does her job, and well. She risks her life and her sanity beyond the Gate. They're just a bad match, she and Landry. Well, she never got on with General West, either. So she'll sign the lying documents, and bury an empty coffin, and it will be business as usual. And she won't think of all that's left of Jack O'Neill, off in another galaxy, or what the Asgard are doing with...it. Or why.

"General Bauer was worse," she says quietly. "Only here for a week. Killed three Gate Teams. Dr. Weir...didn't get anybody killed—" _Only Jack_. She can't help believing that. If Elizabeth hadn't delayed them, kept them from going through the Gate, surely the outcome would have been different? "—but she damned near got Earth destroyed negotiating with the _Goa'uld_. Landry's better."

Cam shakes his head. "He... Did you know I dated his daughter?"

"Um... General Landry has a daughter?"

"Yeah. She was here a few months back. That virologist? Dr. Lam?"

"She's Landry's daughter?"

Cam smiles, but oh, god, he's still pissed. "How do you think she got clearance so fast? Yeah. Not that she isn't damned good, though. They wanted her for the SGC, and she didn't want a job that would put her within a thousand miles of her father."

"So they're close?"

That gets her a slightly-more-genuine smile. "Oh, he's always been good with people," Cam says, and she's actually shocked, hearing that, because okay, civilian, geek, unworldly, and all the rest, but she's lived among the military for over a decade now, and she's just heard Cameron Mitchell _criticizing his commanding officer_. She stares at him. Cam shrugs. "Her mom's Vietnamese. They're divorced. Been for a long time. She changed her name to her mom's as soon as she could."

That's telling. "So when were you two an item?"

"A while back. She was an intern, I was a patient."

"I bet you took her home and fed her."

His expression grows distant; the smile fades. "Tried to."

"Sorry."

"Why?" His attention is back with her now.

"It obviously didn't work out."

Cam sighs. "Worked out as well as it was meant to. Military brats...sometimes we get along great—like me and Sam. Sometimes we remind each other of bad times."

She raises her eyebrows, not quite willing to put the question into words. Cam has never said one bad thing about his family. _Did you have a bad family, Cam? Or bad times?_

"No," he says, answering the unspoken question. "But she did. And if there's one thing I've learned, it's that it can be a good thing if you treat your command like your family—or it can be a bad thing."

This makes no sense to her, though it obviously does to Cam. "He's not...bad," she says hesitantly. Landry doesn't like her, but then, most people don't.

"You don't understand," Cam says.

"I've never been accused of being military," she answers.

"You're a lot more—" Cam says, and stops. "Come on," he says. "Let's get out of here."

And she goes, because right now she doesn't want to be here at all.

It seems odd for it to be day, and the same day—bright and sunny and clear—when they get to the surface. It's disorienting. "Grocery shopping," she says vaguely, because that was what Cam was on his way to do when he was interrupted.

"You go on home," he says. "I'll be by in a couple of hours."

She nods—thinking, actually, of the roses at the bottom of the garden, and does she dare try to prune them back herself?—and walks to her Jeep. It's oven-hot inside; the afghan has filled the cab with the warm scent of baked yarn. She puts the Jeep into gear and drives off. At the house, she brings the afghan inside and drapes it over the couch. The colors swear luridly at the worn green velvet of the Mission Revival sofa, and the muted greys and oranges of the Navajo blanket General Hammond gave her years ago. Still, afghans belong on couches. She thinks that must be a rule.

She takes the slippers Teal'c gave her into the bedroom and sets them beside the bed. Changes from skirt and blouse to khakis and a t-shirt. Remembers to take off the necklace Sammy gave her, and tucks it into her drawer beside Catherine's pendant.

Then she digs down to the bottom drawer, and pulls out a framed photograph. Jack and Sara and Charlie. Charlie was a beautiful child. Sara looks enough like Sammy to be her older sister. Jack? He looks almost the way he did when she first met him, but young in a way she never saw, then or ever. The photograph, she thinks, was taken just before Charlie died. She saw Jack for the very first time three months after he'd buried Charlie. Angry, bitter, blaming himself for Charlie's death. Ready to die. Later he changed his mind. His marriage didn't survive Charlie's death; he and Sara still loved each other; they just couldn't _stand_ each other.

She needs to call Sara, to tell her that her husband's— _ex-husband's_ —body is finally going into the ground. Even though it's a lie. The Air Force will bury an empty box. (With full military honors; Dani will see to that.) An empty box buried next to an unquiet grave, because down through the years, Charlie was never allowed to rest in peace. Aliens and enemies—the crystal creature, the Replicators, Sokar—would conjure him out of Jack's memories through innocence or malice. In one sense, Charlie only died when Jack did. He was always an unspoken presence; the thing—failure, loss—for which Jack blamed himself most. The reason—again unspoken—why he fought so hard to keep them all alive. _Never again._

#

"He what?" Sam says. "Why?"

On his way down the Mountain, following Dani's Jeep, he gives Sam the rundown on why Little Miss got called in on her day off. "Papers to sign," he repeats. There's something bothering him about that, and he can't quite pin it down. Papers to sign? But she hadn't. So why...?

Sam snorts contemptuously. "She could sign those any time. Come on, Cam. After the autopsy they did? She'd never be able to ID the body anyway. And you know we've always cooperated with the Asgard. She'd agree."

And that's when it hits him. She didn't even have to know at all. Didn't have to get her nose rubbed in the fact Colonel O'Neill's body was being handed over to aliens for God knows what in the way of hoodoo medical experiments.

Didn't have to be the one who actually handed him over.

He'd known—on some level—at the time. Thought it was wrong. Didn't want to fly off the handle. Talking to Sam makes it crystal-clear. They could have given Little Miss a sealed coffin to bury and she'd never have known. This isn't about O'Neill. This is about _Dani._ And what the actual fuck…?

"I can't believe he made her do that," Sam says, and she sounds furious. "Dani— The Colonel—"

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says defensively, and Cam feels a little sick, because Sam has never stonewalled him before. They've known each other fifteen years. Laughed and cried and mourned and told each other their darkest secrets. The only secrets Sam would never tell would be the ones that weren't hers.

"Sam?" he says.

"I don't know. They were close. We were close. You know that, Cam. I'm sorry. I'm not the one to ask." 

She sounds rattled and desperate and what she's trying not to say tells him more than what she does say. Something there, something more than just the closeness of a really close team, and Sam probably damn near struck herself stone blind working to not see it. They say politicians are all about smoke and mirrors, but for Cam's money, it's the military. They make things vanish in plain sight all the time. And what he knows—for sure—is General Landry did something that didn't need to be done. To a member of _Cam's team_ , a woman who'd lost her entire family less than two weeks ago and who's just come home from a war zone.

In God's name: why?

He goes grocery shopping. He goes by the house, and nobody answers the door, but her Jeep's in the driveway, and when he walks around the side he finds her down at the bottom of the back yard hacking the hedge to pieces, and he knows it's the only way she can let herself cry. And what hurts even more is that he knows she can't even tell that she's hurt. _Why_ she hurts.

#

At last she tucks the picture away. Finds her old slippers and takes them to the trash, then goes to the garage. She was right. She _did_ see a pair of pruning shears here. They're rusty, but there's a can of 3-in-1 Oil tucked on a shelf. She applies it lavishly, and soon the mechanism is moving freely. There are work gloves here, too—dusty, forgotten, tucked into a corner and too large for her hands. She puts them on and goes out into the yard.

The roses run in a long half-wild hedge all along the back of the property, growing into (and through) an old wire fence. The blooms are tiny and deep red. She cuts down at the roots, pulling the canes free where she can, but most of them are too deeply entangled with the fence and each other to come free. Soon her eyes start to swell, and tears—allergies—run down her face. The smell of roses is stifling, and the petals of blown roses drift everywhere as she shakes the hedge, red as new blood. She cuts, cuts, cuts. It's hard to breathe.

"Hey." Cam walks around the side of the house. "What'cha doing?" He sounds...calmer...now, but there's still a kind of wariness in his voice that makes her wary in return.

"Gardening." Her voice comes out as a hoarse croak, and she coughs. Sneezes again.

"Oh, yeah, I can see that. Stuff's in the car. You want to let me in? Ice cream's gonna melt."

She waves toward the house—the sliders are open—and straightens up from her pruning crouch, realizing suddenly just how thoroughly her breathing has been compromised. When she inhales, she can hear the air whistling in her swollen throat, the rasp in her lungs. She drops the shears to the grass, pulls off her gloves. She's only half done. "I thought—" she says, and can't finish the sentence, because she's suddenly out of air.

"Why don't you go take your pills? I'll get the bags in," Cam says. He walks back to the house, and she follows. Off to the bathroom, where she fumbles through her medicine cabinet. Emergency inhaler. Antihistamines. Eyedrops. Washes her face and blows her nose. Regards herself in the mirror. She looks as if she's been crying, but she hasn't. Not really. She cleans her glasses—they're spattered with salt—and goes back out. Cam has reached the putting-her-groceries-away stage.

"I picked up a few extra things I thought you might like," he says.

There's a bakery box on the counter. She opens it. Cherry pie. And she asked Cam to pick up ice cream, so there's dinner. She goes to inspect her refrigerator. In addition to the basic necessities—orange juice, milk, beer—there's a roast chicken in it, a couple of cartons of deli salads.

"I _do_ eat, you know," she says.

"Yeah, and I always figure it's easier to eat when there's food around," Cam says. "Never figured you for the gardening type," he adds.

"I keep meaning to tell the service... Pie?"

They eat pie, and then she discovers she has lemons (for a reason that makes sense to Cam), and Cam makes lemonade out of them, and she goes out on the back deck and watches him finish pruning the hedge. He tells her if she doesn't want them just to grow back, she needs to get the roots dug out, but that shouldn't be too hard, since roses have shallow roots. He talks about fences, and walls, and property lines, and growing zones, and planting something down there that she isn't _quite_ so allergic to. And she knows they're supposed to be having some other conversation, but she doesn't know her lines. She'd like to tell him she's all right, but that would imply there was a reason he needed to be told, a reason he was worrying about her in the first place. And she doesn't want to think that. She'll get past this (whatever it is; she won't think about what it is; won't let it have even that much reality), day by day. Just as she always has. Living in _since._

And eventually (lemonade all gone, second piece of pie, and while it's not as good as Cam's pie, it's good) he gets back in his car and leaves. Before he goes, she remembers to give him the spare key to the house. _Keys,_ actually, because there's one to the front door and one to disarm the security alarm just inside. Key and combination—the combination's her birthday—and she doesn't always remember to set it, in fact doesn't set it as often as not, but just in case she _does_ set it, he needs to know how to disarm it. And something's unresolved, but she won't think what. She has work to do, and she'll concentrate on that. She puts the empty pitcher into the dishwasher.

Now that Cam is gone she shuts up the house. She knows he thinks its silly—and at his place it is—and it's not that she likes the cold, but the a/c filters the air a little, and her HEPA filter is just about useless if the windows are open. She flips on the unit in the living room. It's going to take a while to make some headway. Her eyes are still swollen, and there's no one here to see now, so she goes and makes herself up an icepack.

Of course then, between the icepack and the a/c (and dammit, she's _sunburned_ ; didn't put on any sunblock and she was out in the yard for a couple of hours at least) now she's cold. She pulls the afghan down from the back of the couch and wraps it around herself one-handed, holding the icepack in place with the other.

She sits in self-imposed darkness, listening to the burr and swish of machinery. She doesn't want to think, but she can't still her mind. So much to do, and work has always been her refuge. The one thing people can't take away from her, when they've taken everything else. And they always do. So after a few minutes she puts the icepack aside, and unwraps herself from the afghan, and puts on a sweatshirt, and gets a beer, and goes up to her study, and makes lists.

#

When he leaves Little Miss's house, he calls Sam to update her, then just drives around for a while. Thinking. No sense rushing into things when you don't have to. _Make haste slowly._ Momma always said that, and it confused the hell out of him when he was in short pants. Meant to, of course. Meant to make him stop and _think._

He's thinking now.

Little Miss can be hard to please. She can be pretty damned Old Testament about some things. Makes up her mind in a flash of lightning, and changing it? That's past praying for. Love you or hate you, it's written in stone, and you'd have as much luck in teaching a pig to whistle as getting her to change her opinion. Other times? She doesn't even seem to notice what people think of her. It's like they're speaking Chinese. Except for the fact she knows Chinese. She likes or dislikes people in an instant. But never—Cam has come to realize—on the basis of how they treat _her_. And so—it's not something he wants to think, but he's never flinched from the facts—she's making excuses for Landry, while it's clear General Landry despises her. That'd make less sense than it does except for the fact Cam knows full well you hate what you're afraid of. _"General Bauer was worse,"_ she told him, as if that's a defense for General Landry's behavior. As if anything General Landry does is all right, because he's not as bad for the SGC as General Bauer was. 

Now, Cam has known from Day One that General Landry wasn't quite sure of how to deal with all his civilians. He's in a difficult position, Lord knows, having to ride herd on a bunch of scientists. And the ones attached to the Gate Teams are neither fish nor fowl. Not military, and not—exactly—civilians, especially after a few years of going Out There. So it's a tough call. And the man insists on treating the SGC as if it were a regular Air Force Base. Instead of what Cam knew it was before he'd been here a week: a war zone. Sometimes that's real noticeable.

She says he's better than General Bauer was, and she ought to know. But that's not good enough. Because Cam's taken the time to think it over, and he's talked to Sam, and he's decided what General Landry did today was wrong. And because he needs to know more about what General Landry did— _how much damage_ General Landry did—more, maybe, than what Landry knows himself—he drives back on up to the Mountain.

Teal'c's in his quarters. He opens the door when Cam knocks. The room is dark, but there are candles burning everywhere. "Oh, ah, sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt your _kel'no'reeming._ "

"You did not." Teal'c closes the door. "I find I am unable to achieve peace this evening."

"Sorry to hear that."

Teal'c sits back down on the floor. Cam is always impressed at how _flexible_ the big guy is. He indicates Cam should sit down, too, and Cam just barely manages it without knocking over any of the candles. "You are not at peace either, Colonel Mitchell."

You've got to hand it to the Jaffa. They're not much for small talk. "No," he says. "Not really at peace. No." Pissed as hell, yes. And _scared out of his fucking mind,_ because Lord God, this is their _commanding officer_ who's running these little pissant schoolyard vendettas against members of his own command, and sure, Cam's seen it, heard it, ducked it before, but the SGC is the gatekeeper for the defense of the entire goddamned _Earth,_ and if Landry's doing this today just what the hell is he going to do tomorrow?

"The actions of General Landry were not the actions of an honorable warrior," Teal'c says, and his voice is a rumble way down low in his chest. Like the thunder you hear before one king hell of a storm. No point in wondering how Teal'c found out, but if Teal'c knows, it's probably all over the Base by now.

Cam sighs, just a little, because he needs to go places now that he'd rather not. "I kinda need you to level with me here, big guy."

Teal'c regards him unblinkingly, and man, he just looks _scary._ "I have always been honest with you, Colonel Mitchell."

_Right._ "You knew Colonel O'Neill." It's not really a question, but you have to start somewhere.

"O'Neill and I were brothers," Teal'c says.

"And you were on SG-1 since the beginning, I mean, ever since it was formed—" He's babbling, and he knows it. _Get to the point, Shaft, get to the point—_ "And I need you to tell me, because you were there, because you saw them, about Dani, and Colonel O'Neill, I mean, how they—"

"They were in love," Teal'c says, cutting, oh mama, right to the chase. "They did not speak of this." He pauses, and considers for a very long time. "Perhaps they did not know."

_Oh Jesus H. Bleeding Christ on a bicycle,_ Cam thinks. He's pretty sure at least one of them knew, and he'd bet his immortal soul it wasn't his baby girl. Her not knowing isn't a really big stretch. She's great with people, so long as they're not from around here. Or they're nothing to do with her. The closer to home something is, the more she doesn't want to know about it. And back then, everybody in Washington was hammering at the SGC to close down every other minute, and when they weren't doing that, they were pressuring General Hammond to reassign Little Miss and Sam to deskbound positions; Sam's told him. Any kind of SG-1 romance wouldn't have gone over really well. And there'd've been no way to keep it under wraps.

But. In love anyway. And all four of them pretending the elephant in the room wasn't there, all in their different ways. And then Batshit Jack got himself frozen, and then he died, and they were all managing to cope (Tegalus, Abydos, Kelowna) until Landry pulls _this_ on her. Cam isn't sure whether Landry was listening to gossip—hell, _he's_ heard all kinds of gossip, from the barely-likely to the never-gonna-happen, both about SG-1 Then and SG-1 Now—or just got lucky. It doesn't matter either way. There are lines you just don't cross, and Landry has crossed one of them.

Why? Why now? What's changed? Landry's been here just about two years now. Isn't it a tad late to start trying to rein in his command? 

He's missed something. He knows he has. What he doesn't know (yet) is how much it's going to cost them.

"Thank you, Teal'c. That's...very helpful."

"You are in love with her as well."

He supposes he hasn't been keeping it much of a secret, at least from his team. New frat guidelines. New era. "Uh... yeah. Have been for a while."

Teal'c smiles faintly. "Patience is one of the greatest skills a warrior can possess."

And the day has really had its ups and downs, but getting Teal'c's blessing _definitely_ counts as an "up" in Cam's book. Not that Little Miss is gonna do anything like take the big guy's advice on things. And not like Teal'c's going to give it, because Teal'c's too smart to waste his breath. But it's kinda nice to know Cam's family isn't going to be searching for his _body._ He suspects—if he ever pissed Teal'c off all the way—there wouldn't be a body to find. "Yeah. I got that," he says.

Teal'c goes back to thinking. He's not slow. People always make that mistake about Teal'c—about anybody his size, really. Slow in body, slow in mind. They forget (Cam doesn't) that before Teal'c chucked it all and came to the SGC, Teal'c was a _general of armies_ for Apophis. That means thinking fast, and moving fast, or being dead. When Teal'c takes his time over something, it's because it's complicated. And because he's got the luxury of time. Cam's pretty much the same way.

"I believe the Commander of Stargate Command has forfeited our respect," Teal'c says at last. And Cam has heard kinder death-sentences.

"I got that, too," he answers evenly.

They are in so much trouble.

#

When he leaves the Mountain—again—he drives to Sam's. It isn't late and it isn't early. Just about getting dark. It's a good forty-five minutes to Sam's place, if you don't rush, and he sees no reason to rush. Time to think.

The SGC is classified as MAJCOM. It operates independent of damned near everything in the military chain of command. General Landry is a direct report to the Joint Chiefs and the President. To Homeworld, too, just lately, but that's a little complicated; Homeworld is more of a clearing-house to keep everything organized (military and civilians all muddled in together) than a department that's actually at the top of the food chain. And while the IOA has influence—purse-string influence—the SGC doesn't report to it. All of which is Cam's way of thinking that if he was to want to go over Landry's head for something—just supposing—there are damned few places for him to go, and a Lieutenant Colonel doesn't really have the clout to reach any of them. Sam has a bit more pull than he does. Old friends. Family connections.

He's not sure he likes what he's thinking. But when your back is up against the wall, it's no time to be nice-minded.

Dani Jackson is irreplaceable. Cam loves her, but that's not the point. She's their top _Goa'uld_ expert. She can think in the damned snakes' language. She's _this close_ to cracking Ancient, and leaving aside the fact it'll be really useful for those Pegasus folks, it's starting to look like it ties in—somehow—to their number one bad boy, Anubis. Who probably has "Destruction of Earth" on his do-list. She is _not_ somebody you fuck over just because you've had a bad day. Or...what? Does Landry think he's going to _intimidate_ her? The woman has died _five times_ , some of them by torture. Not two weeks ago she was sitting on Abydos refusing to hand over the Eye of Ra to Anubis, knowing damned well he'd murder every member of her family if she didn't. That she didn't and Anubis got the Eye anyway and _did_ kill them is beside the point. Cam knows Dani pretty damned well by now. She wouldn't have caved.

She doesn't respond to threats well. (Of course, neither does he). You've got to win her respect. General Hammond had it. Cam knows that. He's not sure he'd be walking today, if not for Hammond. Oh, sure, nobody's ever accused Cam of a lack of stubbornness. But General H. was there at the right time, giving him something to hold onto: the people his boys and girls had died for. Earth's too big a thing to love sometimes. Four men and women—he could get his mind around that. And one of them was Sam.

He arrives at the house, parks, goes up the walk, knocks. It takes her a while to get to the door.

"Cam," she says. "I was out in the back. Come on in."

He walks in. The windows are open, and that's a relief. Northerners tend to air-condition their houses like deep winter—he hasn't been so damned cold since the summer he was stationed in Texas. Even a Colorado winter is nothing in it. He'd rather feel the actual weather.

"Beer? Lemonade? I'm drinking margaritas."

"Beer, then." He gets one and follows her out onto the back deck. Bug-zappers and citronella candles. Almost like home. "Been up to the Mountain," he says, sitting down. "Talked to Teal'c." He hesitates for just a moment, because Jack O'Neill is dead and gone, and he's not sure whether or not Sam wants to officially know what she spent so many years not knowing. "It's all over the Mountain."

Sam smiles and raises her glass. "Here's to Graham."

It only takes Cam a second to put that one together. Graham Simmons. Landry's aide. Handles every piece of paper that crosses the General's desk. Major Simmons has been at the SGC since it started, through every Foothold, Wildfire, and auto-destruct countdown the SGC has seen. And he's been SG-1's pet through most of it. Not in a bad way. But he started out as a Gate Room tech, and after a while, if Sam or Dani needed monitoring done for any of their particular projects, they'd ask for Graham. It's put him in the line of fire more than once.

"It isn't right, babe," he says.

"A woman's place is in the wrong," Sam says viciously, and Cam wonders just which number margarita this is. "Oh, god," she says, leaning her head back against her chair. "I miss General Hammond."

"So," Cam says, keeping it casual (knowing he's not going to fool Sam, but still), "how would _he_ have handled it?" _And why is Landry handling it any different?_

Sam gives him a sideways glance. Her eyes are narrow, like she's deciding on the best place to hide the body, but Cam knows he's not the one on her bad side. "She'd have to know. Thor can't keep a secret to save his life. But she didn't have to know _now._ She didn't have to...do it. He'd have taken care of all the details. He'd have arranged the funeral—I bet Landry's making her do that too?"

"I don't think it even crossed his mind to take care of it," Cam answers. And Cam knows he won't be let to.

"And then—probably after the funeral—he'd have taken her aside, probably taken her home, and poured some Scotch into her, and led her around to it carefully. You know: so she could get there first."

"I know." Always the best way to handle delicate subjects with Little Miss. Give her all the pieces and let her put together the puzzle herself.

"There is _no way in hell_ she would have refused," Sam says bitterly. "No way."

"Likes the Asgard that much?" Cam asks, though he doesn't think that's the answer.

_"Knowledge_ , Cam," Sam says. "It's what he died for. Don't you think she'd give _anything_ for the chance some of that knowledge might survive—somewhere?"

He hadn't thought of that, not really. It's not the way his mind works. But it's the way hers does. Sam's too. He's seen the crazy-mad risks they'll both take to learn something, to prove something.

So...yeah. What happened today could have been all right with her. If it happened some other way. If it'd been done by someone else.

Anubis is back. They thought they'd rolled up the _Goa'uld_ in Antarctica. Paid a helluva butcher's bill. One he'll never forget. But his boys and girls saved Earth.

Only it turns out… they didn't.

He drinks his beer in silence, trying to make all the pieces of the puzzle he has sort out into a round tale. He thinks it's going to take him a while. There's no point in saying things to Sam she doesn't need to hear. He's known her for a long time. She'll guess what she needs to guess, and be able to deny she knows anything at all.

Life in the military.

#

It's late when she finally stops working. Lists become a hunt for Sara O'Neill's phone number—should she call? Would a letter be better? A personal visit? She has no idea of what to do, and no one can advise her. She'll make the arrangements first, she decides. Then tell Jack's ex-wife.

From that, she goes on to other things. Background documents for briefings she has to give in the coming week. More work on the Ancient paper. It takes a while, but at last she surrenders to the embrace of her most constant lover, the only one who has never betrayed her: scholarship. It's midnight when she's finally satisfied with what she's accomplished. The day's events have become ancient history. Far away. Unable to cause either joy or pain. Morpheus and Thanatos were brothers. She goes downstairs, makes coffee. Sammy thinks it's odd—has thought so for years—that she drinks coffee just before going to bed. _"Doesn't it keep you awake?"_

No. It makes no difference, and it's the one link—she'll never say so—she's willing to keep with her past. Coffee in a tin cup, over a campfire in the jungle. Quiet voices—Spanish, Russian—the harsh tang of hand-rolled cigarettes passed from hand to hand. Older memories—and stronger coffee—but she was too young to drink it then. Her parents wouldn't have approved. Nick didn't care, though. He gave her coffee on the day of her parents' funeral. She's drunk it ever since, everywhere she's been. The best times—with Nick and later—were always dig sites. The association of coffee and darkness and fire, something imprinted on her early. It means "home" to her and "safety"—even when that's a lie and an illusion. The first time they'd camped offworld, and she'd sat in front of the tiny Sterno stove drinking hideous coffee in the dark, she'd felt as if she'd finally come home. Nothing she could ever really explain, to anyone. When the coffee's brewed, she takes her cup out onto the deck and lights the citronella candles there. Coffee and night and fire.

She finishes her coffee and blows out the candles. Time for bed. On the way inside she hesitates, and picks up the tumbled afghan from the couch, and carries it with her to the bedroom.

#

On Sunday, Sammy calls—she's heard about Thor's weird request, which Dani doesn't find odd; Cam probably told her, and anyway, she's sure half the Base knows by now. They talk for a while; there was a huge file of pictures from Cassie in Dani's email when she checked it this morning; snapshots of an ordinary life. Pictures of streets in England and France and Brussels; smiling boys and girls. They all look so...untouched. Cassie says she's going to Amsterdam next. She's sent postcards—odd cultural artifacts from a simpler time—but of course they haven't arrived yet.

Cam doesn't call; reassuring in an odd way, since if he were hovering she'd know he thought she was hurt. And she isn't. She's fine. She finally decides to give up hope of ever being able to remember to phone her landscaping service during business hours, and writes them a letter ordering them to finish removing the rose hedge. She catches up on some of her professional reading, even plays the piano—or tries to. The moment her fingers hit the keys, she realizes it's badly out of tune. She sighs. One more errand to schedule—can she possibly either get a weekday off or induce Jerome to come on a Saturday? And (for that matter) be sure of being here on a Saturday if she does? Oh, well, Nyan or Amelia could cover for her ( _Janet used to do that,_ her mind whispers). All that's left is to beg him to come.

Something else to shoehorn into her Monday.

#

The week starts (as it always does) with the thing she's come to dread most under what she still thinks of (two years in) as the New Regime: the Department Heads meeting. It's where the SGC's week is planned: missions and briefings and assignments. Where General Landry gets his overview of what's going on in his departments. Under General Hammond, it was SG-1 and Janet. She and Sammy were Department Heads (Archaeo-Anthropology & Translation; Physics & Engineering respectively), Jack was General Hammond's 2IC. Janet was CMO. Teal'c sat in pretty much out of courtesy. They were in and out in under an hour; at the end of it, she had the list of the week's planned missions and any preliminary information they had (there was always something) and a pretty good idea of whether the pre-mission briefing would fall to her or to Sammy.

Now? She's lucky to be out of there under three hours. There are ten people at the table. Her and Sammy and Dr. Brightman (now), but Amelia's there, too, and Jay Felger, because the General believes in _redundancy_ (so he says), and Graham and Walter (Walter for reasons she's never figured out), and Colonel Reynolds to report on the Teams (okay, he's the most senior surviving member of an SGC Team. But he's a Marine. Shouldn't _Cam_ be here making this report?), and an airman to take minutes.

And Landry doesn't _let_ them make their reports, exactly. He asks questions, and she's always thought questions were a good thing, but some of his questions are pointless, and some of them require a lot of preparation to answer (which of course nobody's done), and some of them are (probably) purely rhetorical, like why can't they ever have doughnuts for the Department Heads Meeting? (They could, she's sure, if he told Graham he _wanted_ doughnuts.) But by the end of it—Amelia knows enough to keep her mouth shut (Dani has always adored Amelia) but Felger _always_ insists on making a long (pointless, trivial) report on New Developments in Engineering nobody needs to hear—she's at least got what she needs to prepare the briefings her Department needs to handle in the coming week. Some she'll hand off to others: she's not an expert on _every_ culture that's ever evolved on Earth. Some are pretty much boilerplate—what to look for, and how you'll know when you've found it—and those can be done by others. Some—including the prep for SG-1's two missions—she needs to handle herself.

Two is a heavy schedule for them (not that they haven't caught more trips through the Gate in a seven-day period, but that included emergencies), but both of them are six-hour walkovers of planets the preliminary telemetry indicates are uninhabited. The first one's tomorrow. Then a day back in the office, and out again Thursday.

It's not that she's complaining. But she would have preferred a lighter schedule this week, with everything else she has to do. She hurries down to her office, sorts through the stack of paper she's accumulated, goes up and down Geek Row handing out assignments. It's faster to do it in person than to rely on either email or phone. She knows her department: half of them only check their email once a day, and the other half are perfectly capable of having a lucid telephone conversation and forgetting its entire content before they've hung up the phone. And those who fall into neither category (unlike Engineering which insists a whole only consists of two halves, there are more than two halves to AA&T) are temperamental prima donnas (male and female) who require a certain amount of hand-feeding. There's another hour and a half gone. Noon, and her day hasn't begun yet.

And normally (she still thinks of it as "normal," even though it's the Old Normal, not the New Normal) the rest of the team would already know about their scheduled missions, but Cam and Teal'c weren't in the meeting. So there's no reason not to go to lunch, since she can cover two things at once: lunch, and what they're going to be doing this week. 

Today she gets there fifteen minutes late: hysterics from their new Mesoamerican expert. Dr. Velasquez went offworld (it was the next thing to an emergency, and Dani wasn't available—not that she's really a Mayan expert anyway) and the deserted ruins turned out to be not-all-that-deserted. (Exeunt Dr. Velasquez.) It took her a month to replace him, finding somebody who not only had the qualifications, but who could pass the security review and was willing to come. Dr. Caswell is _qualified,_ but she's high-maintenance. The artifacts SG-16 dropped off in her office for identification have fresh blood on them (so she says). Dani checks. It's not fresh, but it's recent. SG-16 got back late last night (it was in the mission log). Two of them were wounded. She takes Dr. Caswell down to the Infirmary, goes back to 19, finds Nyan, tells him to prep the artifacts in Dr. Caswell's office for identification—meaning, wash the blood off. Reminds herself to add to her do-list a little chat with Dr. Caswell about the fact that yes, sometimes the things you take out of the cartons will be bloody. And hopes she isn't going to have to start trolling for another Mesoamerican specialist. You'd think somebody who spends their time studying human sacrifice would be more thick-skinned. Finally she can go down to the Commissary.

The others have all claimed their usual table. She doesn't bother with the steam table delicacies today; just grabs a sandwich off the rack and gets coffee.

"Good morning, campers," she says, sitting down. Teal'c looks really pissed about something, and she wonders what.

"You've got blood on your chin," Cam says, frowning.

She reaches up, feels the roughness. Licks her thumb and rubs, then scrubs at it with her napkin. "Sixteen bled all over the artifacts they brought back."

"Yeah, I was just down in the Infirmary. Chin has the damnedest luck, doesn't she? Gonna be all right, though."

"And, um, new guy? Their archaeologist?" SG-16 was almost completely restaffed after P48-782.

"Coltraine. Yeah, he's gonna be fine. Both out for a few weeks, though."

"What happened?" She hasn't seen a mission report yet.

Cam shakes his head. "Alien temple. Lots of Ancient carvings, but the locals had taken it over. Coltraine wanted to get a look at what was underneath."

"It was booby-trapped," Dani guesses.

"Got it in one," Cam says. "So they're dragging Coltraine out of there, and the locals show up. Major Stevenson managed to fight them off, but Chin got speared. Everybody made it home, though."

"With the... Wait. They looted a temple, and stole artifacts, and were chased back to the Gate by hostile natives? Um, Cam, we've got to return those items. We shouldn't have taken them in the first place." She knows most of SG-16 is new, but they've gotten the same Orientation Lectures everyone else has in the last ten years. The SGC does _not_ loot alien worlds (not where the aliens are still there, at least). "Does General Landry know?"

"I think Major Stevenson is debriefing at 1400," Cam says. 

She checks her watch. Ninety minutes. "I'd better sit in on that," she decides. If Stevenson's gone crazy, they'd better know now. She sets down her sandwich untouched. She needs to go take another look at those artifacts and try to figure out why the hell they brought them back in the first place. She starts to get to her feet.

"Hey," Cam says. "You haven't touched your lunch."

"I've got to go take another look at what they brought back," she says. "There's got to be a reason."

There is, of course. Almost good enough. The objects look Mayan—that's why they're on Caswell's desk. Made of gold. But interspersed among the Mayan glyphs are Ancient symbols. Dani groans. She's caught up to the objects in the Wet Lab, where Nyan is in the process of carefully cleaning them. He's almost done.

"We _have_ to take them back." Photographing them thoroughly first, of course. But then, back.

"Not going to be easy," Cam says. He's standing in the doorway.

She sighs. "No." She tells Nyan to take a complete set of images of the objects—ultraviolet and infrared as well—and then pack them in a case for transport. Her next stop is General Landry. Cam is tagging along, just as if he doesn't have his own work to do. It's only a short wait before she can get in to see the General.

"Dr. Jackson. And what can I do for you now?"

(Landry feels he spends his time catering to her. Ah, if only.) "General Landry. About SG-16's mission to P2X-819, I'm afraid they inadvertently removed some items of cultural significance to the indigenous population."

General Landry regards the papers on his desk. "Ah, yes. That was the mission on which Specialist Chin and Captain Coltraine were injured. I'm debriefing Major Stevenson in...oh, about an hour."

"Yes, sir. I believe some of their difficulty arose because they removed objects from the temple, and apparently it was in active use. We need to return those items immediately."

General Landry raises his eyebrows. "Dr. Jackson?"

"I really don't think it will make a lot of difference, General. They're unlikely to trust us now, and that's too bad, because it would have been nice to be able to get a closer look at the site Captain Coltraine found. But at the very least, sir, we aren't looters. We've always respected the native cultures with which we've come into contact, whether they could offer us something of benefit or not."

"As we did with the Salish Indians of PXY-887?" General Landry asks. The man has the light touch of a falling anvil.

"If we don't learn from our mistakes, we aren't likely to get off so lightly the next time. Tonane's people had powerful friends, and we're just lucky these people didn't as well. General, the artifacts will be ready for transport in a couple of hours. We can have them back on 819 by the end of the day. I've ordered a complete series of images taken of them. We won't lose any information. I'll take them back personally."

"You understand this isn't an official mission, Dr. Jackson?" General Landry says. "I won't order anyone to accompany you." He's looking past her, and suddenly she remembers Cam is in the room with her.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. And if I could just sit in on SG-16's debriefing?"

"I'm sure you have better things to do with your time, Doctor."

She sighs as she gets to her feet. She'll have to settle for reading Stevenson's report. She got most of what she wanted, anyway.

"So when do we leave?" Cam asks, as they walk down the hall. Her next stop is the Infirmary. If she can't hear Major Stevenson's version of events, she's going to go see what Captain Coltraine has to say.

"As soon as Nyan's done with his photographing. A couple of hours."

"I'm sure you've got this all planned out."

"In an ideal world, I'd put the artifacts back where they were removed from. I don't think we'll get that opportunity. I'm just going to leave them at the steps of the Stargate and run."

"Good plan."

"Go do something military. I'll see you in a few hours."

She goes down to the Infirmary. Unfortunately, Chin has been sedated (she took a spear in the back) and Coltraine's been moved to the Academy Hospital: when his films came back, Sally decided his leg was more than she wanted to deal with at the SGC.

"I wanted to talk to him," Dani sighs. Well, actually she wanted to smack him. Hard. Looting temples is fine—she's done it herself—but not when the temples are in current and active use.

"Better luck next time," Sally says unsympathetically.

That leaves Stevenson, Gaskell, and Hunt. Half an hour to the briefing. She doubts Major Stevenson will be a lot of use, and she and Hunt have never really gotten on well. But Gaskell's only barely a Lieutenant. He's really an engineer, and they yanked him back into the Air Force and slapped a commission on him when they decided they wanted his particular skills for the SGC. It's not that he didn't come willingly. But the commission's still new and shiny. She heads off to 19. He's in his lab. It's down the hall from Sammy's. She knocks at the door.

"Dr. Jackson." He looks surprised to see her down here in wonk territory.

"Lieutenant Gaskell. I wondered if I could talk to you for a few minutes?"

"Sure. Uh...?"

"About P2X-819."

He looks a little alarmed. "We haven't debriefed on that yet."

"I know. I wanted to talk to Captain Coltraine, but he's already been sent over to the Academy Hospital. I wondered if you saw what happened to him?"

"Oh no, Dr. Jackson. Me and the Major and Dr. Hunt were all outside. Chin was doing a perimeter sweep."

"So the Captain was inside by himself?" That's stupid.

"Yes ma'am. We were in radio contact, though. He said he'd found a room with an altar set up in front of a wall covered with Ancient writing. He said the objects on the altar showed obvious Ancient influence, and he was bringing some of them back for study. He said he wanted to get a closer look at the wall. Then we heard him scream."

Oh, god, just how much looting has Coltraine been doing? Does she have to review every mission he's been on?

"And you went to his aid?"

"The Major and I did. He told Dr. Hunt to stay outside."

Dr. Hunt—as far as she remembers—covers geology and xenobotany for SG-16. Technically he's attached to AA&T, but he's made it clear to her he doesn't consider himself a part of her department.

"What had happened?"

"The floor had opened up. Like it was a trap door, you know? Really slick. I think it must have been some kind of counterweight system; those are common in some kinds of ancient temples, but we didn't get a chance to stick around and see how it was done. He'd fallen about twenty feet. I rappelled down and brought him back up, but he'd broken his leg pretty badly. He was lucky at that. There was a big stone wedge in the pit below; he could have broken his back."

"But the temple was deserted?"

"Oh sure," Gaskell says. "Chin scanned the whole area before we went in. Nobody around. We saw smoke—cookfires—from the village up the road, but once we saw the temple, Captain Coltraine said we should probably avoid making contact with them because they'd be hostile."

She's surrounded by idiots. Coltraine saw a temple of obviously Mesoamerican derivation—Mayan, apparently, judging by the artifacts he brought back—which convinced him to avoid making contact with the locals because he was afraid they'd be xenophobic, and so he decided to _loot their temple instead._

"How'd you get him back?" Sally said he had a compound fracture. Right leg.

"Me and Chin cut down a couple of trees and rigged a litter. We were about five kliks from the Gate, and it was slow going, because we didn't want to jostle him." Gaskell shrugs. "A war party caught up to us. The Major fired over their heads at first, but it didn't really slow them down. That was when Chin got speared. We had to shoot into them and they backed off." He looks troubled.

"You all came home. That's the important thing." (Oh god they shot defenseless natives.)

He looks at his watch. "Hey. I gotta go. Nice talking to you, Doctor Jackson."

"Yeah. It's been great." (They are so fucked.)

She goes up to 18. There's a sandwich on her desk, and she eats it, even though she isn't hungry. When she's done, she goes over to the Photography Lab (1400 and she hasn't gotten any work done yet). Nyan says he'll be another hour. She goes back to her office and pulls up SG-16's mission reports for the last several months. Breathes a sigh of relief. This was only Coltrane's sixth mission. None of the others were to planets with indigenous populations. She breaths a silent prayer of thanks that Major Stevenson is not only prompt at filing his reports, but thorough. When she looks up, Cam is leaning against her worktable.

"Um," she says, wondering how long he's been there.

"Interesting reading, I guess."

"This is the first time Coltraine has fucked up," she says simply. "He never had the chance before."

"Not the way you'd have done it?" Cam asks, and she glances at him sharply, because he knows damned well that's not the way she'd have done it.

"We've encountered Mesoamerican-derived cultures before. They're rare: the _Goa'uld_ didn't take that many slaves from the New World. But they exist. Some are extremely peaceful. Like Orban, even though they were the descendants of Aztecs. Others, well, in fact, _all_ Mesoamerican cultures are peaceful; it's just that some of them are xenophobic, and the Aztecs, in particular, had a culture built around human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, for obvious reasons."

"Which would be...?"

"Oh, the usual reason for cannibalism in a culture is scarcity of other sources of protein—which applied in the case of the Aztecs—and the extensive human sacrifice was driven, to some extent, by the high level of intertribal warfare, but unfortunately, even in times of peace, their religion was still structured to require blood sacrifices, so you see..." She waves her hands.

"Messy," Cam says.

"Very," she agrees. "And even messier if you move them to an environment where there are no other tribes at all, and give them new—and very bloody-minded—gods. Bearing this in mind, the first thing I'd want to do is see if the culture whose temple I'd just encountered was Aztec, Mayan, or Inca-derived. If it was Aztec, I'd know I was in trouble. If Mayan, I might be in trouble. If Incan, I'd probably be okay: the Incans were really big on sacrificing children and unblemished captives, and none of us would qualify. If I didn't recognize the motifs the temple was quoting at all, I'd take my chances in contacting the locals."

"Coltraine didn't," Cam says.

She sighs. "According to Lieutenant Gaskell, Coltraine said—on the basis of the temple—that they should avoid making contact with the locals because they were likely to be hostile. I don't know what it looked like, so I can't say; the artifacts look Mayan, but that's no guarantee. He went inside, looted it, triggered a trap, fell into a pit, and while they were getting him back to the Gate, a war party showed up from the village and they had to shoot a bunch of them."

"Probably not going to be happy to see us, then."

"No," she says. She swings her chair around. " _They knew that planet was inhabited._ Why didn't Stevenson stop Coltraine from desecrating the temple?" She runs a hand through her hair.

"Don't know he didn't try," Cam says. "I'll see what's up. Maybe Coltraine just got a little overexcited."

She sighs. "Another memo in my future. _'To all Teams: do not fucking loot the nice indigenous societies. Yours sincerely, Dr. D. Jackson.'_ "

#

They go through the Gate to P2X-819 loaded for bear. All four of them are carrying zats, and Teal'c has a couple of _Goa'uld_ shock grenades besides. They don't want to kill anyone if they don't have to. She's carrying the transport case with the stolen artifacts, and oh, god, she feels _unclean_. That this happened at all is her fault. Coltrane's military, on the Teams, but he's still an archaeologist, so...she's responsible for what he does. And the SGC has always dealt with every culture it encounters as if that culture were Earth's equal. Even when it obviously isn't.

Nobody in sight.

It's dusk here.

She glances at Cam, and he nods. She runs down the steps, travel case in hand. She'll set out the artifacts in front of the DHD. More visible, and she needs to be here to dial, anyway.

She opens the case and pulls out a silk shawl. She cadged it from Amelia—she wanted something to set the objects out on, something to show they were being returned with respect. She spreads it out on the ground and begins setting things on it. Cup, bowl (bowls), knife, mirror...

She feels something whistle by her head.

"Cam!" she shouts. The case is almost empty. She hears the echoing sound a zat makes, sees the bright blue lighting flash. She empties the case, closes and locks it, starts to get to her feet.

"Stay down!" Cam yells, and she does, scuttling backward and crouching against the pedestal of the DHD. She doesn't know what the locals are shooting, or even if they've stopped. She knows the others are still firing, though.

Finally there's silence.

"Clear!" Cam says, and she gets to her feet. There are projectiles on the ground. Not arrows. Darts, about eight inches long. The tips are discolored. She glances up to make sure the other three are clear of the Stargate, then dials home. She's wearing her GDO on her wrist this trip. She sends her code.

General Landry is waiting for them in the Gate Room when they return. "Any problems?" he asks.

"No," Cam says blandly.

He looks at Teal'c, Teal'c looks at Sammy, Sammy looks at Cam. "No, sir," Sammy says. "No problems at all."

#

It's 1600 and her workday hasn't started yet. And it's 1700 before she's done with reporting to the Armory and putting her gear away and checking in with the Infirmary (okay, they were offworld for fifteen minutes tops, but it still counts), and then it's 1800 and she's just started— _finally_ —going through her email inbox. Something she should have been doing at, oh, 1300 today at the latest. And tomorrow's going to be a complete loss, because they're going to be offworld _all fucking day._

"You going home?" Cam asks, poking his head in her door.

"If you're planning to sit here until I do, get a sleeping bag from Stores."

"Backlog?"

"Mondays are busy." Oh, god, she was supposed to call the cemetery today. And find out how to arrange the funeral; she can't call Sara until she does. And she'd wanted to call Jerome about the piano.

"We've got a mission tomorrow."

"We do. And—amazingly—before we go on it, I have to brief SG-10 on how to behave in something similar to an ancient Arabic culture, a briefing for which I have not yet prepared. Nor have I looked at any of the data from _our_ mission, in case, oh, I don't know, there might be something I need to do there. Nor have I looked at my in-box, or my email queue."

"So, you want me to bring you something from the Commissary?"

"I want you to go _home,_ Cam," she says, and her voice is almost a wail. "I want to think somebody—somewhere—is sleeping." She sighs. "I'm going to stay here tonight."

"In your office?" he asks. Not committing himself either way, though she knows perfectly well he thinks she's just going to stay here and work the night straight through.

"No," she says reassuringly (it always surprises her when she feels the need to reassure him). "On-Base quarters. Shorter commute."

"That's good, then. So. See you in the morning?"

She waves, absently.

Email and inbox till 2000, and only because she's ruthless. The briefing for SG-10, till 2300 (she's covered a lot of the material before, which is the only reason why she can pull it together in only three hours: she _will not_ cut corners on something by which people could live or die). Looking over the material on tomorrow's mission only takes her about forty minutes: uninhabited planet, possible source of _naquaadah_ and trinium, yadda yadda. Sammy's briefing, not hers, thank god.

She wonders what Anubis is doing, and who knows. Where those eight Gate addresses lead to, and how they can find out. Whether they'll have any damned warning at all before the next time he shows up to blow them to hell. Even if they could send _Odyssey_ to Pegasus to bring back the ZPM and somebody with the Ancient gene in time, the Antarctic Outpost is apparently out of ammunition. So it wouldn't do them any good anyway, now, would it? And (according to the reports) Atlantis needs its ZPM to power its own defenses against the Wraith. Take its ZPM, and they doom them to death. Plus—perhaps—allowing the Wraith to find a way back to _this_ galaxy if Atlantis falls. And entertaining as it would be to watch the Wraith fight it out with the _Goa'uld_ , she's pretty sure there wouldn't be a lot of humans left to watch.

Midnight. Time to see if she can coax the Infirmary staff to share their doughnuts. Dr. Tadeuszowska has just come on-shift when she arrives. _< "What are you doing in my Infirmary?">_ he demands.

_< "Hoping to steal a doughnut and a cup of coffee,">_ she answers. It occurs to her abruptly that she missed dinner. Did she? Yes, pretty sure. There was a sandwich some time before she Gated out, and she remembers coffee afterward, but no food.

_< "As long as you haven't come to bleed all over my bandages, I'll indulge you,">_ he says. _< "Or to take up one of my beds.">_

_" <Never,>"_ she promises, and Taddy laughs.

It's quiet here tonight. Chin's the only patient, and she's asleep. Dani finishes her coffee, and her doughnut (one of the nice things about being in Taddy's good graces—and getting there at the beginning of the shift—is getting her pick), and goes off to bed.

#

Tuesday starts five hours later, but SG-10 is going through the Gate at 0700, which means they're briefing at 0600. Twenty minutes of presentation—and warnings—and twenty minutes of answering questions is her contribution to the day's festivities. Colonel (Lieutenant Colonel) Moore is a three-year veteran, though. He'll bring them home. And SG-10 caught this mission—on her recommendation—because they're an all-male team. There are times when that's important. Unfortunately, the SGC doesn't have an equivalent all-female team to put into the field for the times (rarer) when that could really make a difference.

After that, off to breakfast. They're scheduled to brief at 0815, Gate at 0930. Home by late afternoon, if all goes well. At breakfast, Cam asks her if she wants to work out this evening. She looks at Teal'c, surprised.

"Colonel Mitchell wishes to learn to defend himself against multiple opponents," Teal'c says.

Okay. That's...plausible. They'll cream him, though. "Depending on how today goes," she says.

But the day goes fine. Nothing but a damned long walk (exhausting, and the bruises she picked up from Friday's practice session still ache), and helping Sammy take the kind of samples that (after ten years) Dani could _do in her sleep._ Not much to do but talk, and there's actually a bit less of that than usual. She supposes they're all tired. She is, anyway. But...no ruins, not even any signs of life. And why couldn't SG-16 have caught this planet instead of their last stop? Why did Coltraine have to channel Indiana Jones? And what is she going to _do_ about it? If General Hammond were still in charge—but would this ever have happened under General Hammond?—she'd just have gone to him and told him her concerns. And he'd have told her how to fix it.

Or...

She doesn't want to think of it, but she has to. Because Jack was General Hammond's 2IC, and Cam isn't Landry's (she can tell Cam what's wrong, but Cam can't fix it, and that doesn't seem right.) And at the end of six hours, having checked off every last test and detail in their Mission Profile, they go home.

There's a message waiting for her when she gets back. It's in the gear-up room (which is also the gear-down room, technically, but nobody ever calls it that; odd, she's always thought, that you gear-up for a mission but you don't gear-down when you come back) because over the years everyone at the SGC has learned if you want a message to actually _get_ to someone on one of the Teams coming back from a mission, you leave it in the gear-up room. Hers is from Graham. She should call his office.

So she does with all due haste, meaning about forty minutes later.

"Graham?"

"Dr. Jackson?" Ten years, just about, and he still won't call her "Dani." She suspects she terrified him far too thoroughly back when he was a Lieutenant.

"Now that we've settled that," she says.

"Yes. Um," he says, and he sounds nervous. She wonders why. She can wait him out, though, and she does. "It's about the funeral arrangements," he finally says, and for a moment, she wonders who's died. Then she remembers. 

"Oh."

"The, uh, the papers are here. The ones you need to sign. I could bring them down to your office, if that's all right?"

"Yes," she says. "Please."

A few minutes later, Graham arrives carrying a folder. He's also a Notary (sometimes that's useful) and countersigns her signature on some of the documents. She barely bothers to look at what she's signing. It's all lies, anyway.

"If you let me know where the...interment is taking place, I can arrange for a sealed coffin," Graham says quietly.

Of course they have to bury something. "I still have to call the cemetery and find out when they can open the grave," she says. "I'll let you know."

She calls the cemetery when Graham leaves—it's still before 1700 (5:00) and its offices are open until six, anyway. They give her a range of dates, seeming a little surprised it isn't urgent, but she supposes they're nearly as used to dealing with weirdness as she is. She picks July 20; far enough away Sara can clear her calendar if she wants to come, and also so SG-1's schedule can be juggled. The anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. Oddly fitting, she thinks. She remembers sitting in a van, back in 1969, trying to convince Lieutenant George Hammond they were all from the future. The moon landing was current events for him—barely a few weeks ago. Ancient history for her.

One problem solved. She glances at her watch. Cam should still be in his office. She picks up her phone. "You still want to work out?" she asks, when he answers.

"Looking forward to it," he says. "I'll call Teal'c."

#

The three of them face each other on the mat. Sammy's there to watch, and Dani's a little surprised (Sammy's never watched their sparring sessions before) but Sammy says she wouldn't miss this for the world. For whatever reason.

Fighting alongside someone else is complicated. The _bashaaks_ aren't quite as long as a regular staff-weapon, but still long enough that she needs to give Teal'c a lot of space to avoid fouling his attacks. The advantage there is it leaves Cam needing to defend from two directions at once. It isn't really possible. He tries to concentrate on her—the weaker opponent—on the theory he can take out Teal'c afterwards. It would be a sound strategy if he could manage it. As it is, he's down and disarmed three times in the first ten minutes.

"Whoa," he says, laughing, as Teal'c helps him up. "I think that plan needs a little work."

"Indeed, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says. He looks amused.

"So what do you say we make it more interesting?" Cam says.

"How?" she asks.

"Us against the big guy."

She shrugs. Teal'c bows. They square off again.

And this time—oh yeah, they still _lose,_ but it takes a lot longer. Because the first time Teal'c disarms Cam, he just backpedals, and she tosses him her _bashaak_ , and when Cam closes up again, she dives for the dropped one. They're circling Teal'c, trying to stay out of each other's way, trying to take Teal'c _down,_ and this isn't something that would ever happen in the field, because if Jaffa were trying to take someone alive they'd just zat him, but it's fun.

But the second time, Cam's grappling with Teal'c, and she comes up on what she hopes is Teal'c's blind side, and he takes one hand off his staff and just _backhands_ her. She goes flying. A moment later, Cam comes flying after her, right over Teal'c's head, and while she's still trying to get up, Teal'c plucks her _bashaak_ out of her hands. He's got all three of them. "Yield," he says mildly.

"Oh yeah," Cam says. She nods, slapping the mat lightly.

Sammy is applauding. Cam gets to his feet and bows—theatrically, as if he were on a stage. She rolls to her knees. Cam helps her to her feet.

"Come on," Sammy says. "Get changed. I'll buy you guys dinner. You must be starved after that."

And they do, and they go—all four of them—down to their favorite Chinese place, and talk about nothing much. Cam drives Teal'c back to the Mountain afterward. She and Sammy go home.

She knows she needs to tell them when the interment is. Probably should have done that tonight. She doesn't want to think about it, though. Didn't want to spoil the pretense of normalcy.

#

On Wednesday she starts to get caught up with her backlog. Another briefing to do, but the team is going out late in the day (it will be morning on the planet when they arrive), so she has time to prep. The situation they're going into is nothing new to her, but that's exactly why she's doing their briefing. To warn them about possible pitfalls. No two situations are ever identical—especially in a galaxy where Anubis is rearranging the chessboard so violently—but any-and-all information is helpful.

She calls Jerome about the piano; between bribes and begging, she extracts a promise from him to come on Saturday— _this_ Saturday—but he can't say exactly when. She promises to be there all day.

She emails Graham, Sammy, Cam, with the interment date. Teal'c doesn't have email (lucky Teal'c). She'll have to tell him in person. Have to call Sara O'Neill, too, but she's not sure when she's home. She'll try her late this afternoon. Maybe then.

She goes on-line, surfing sites to find a replacement for Amelia's shawl. Spending work time on this is probably a shocking waste of the taxpayers' money. The taxpayers can bite her. She finds what she needs and orders it.

She spends a couple of hours outlining a series of Orientation Lectures. _Re-_ Orientation Lectures, really, since: hello? Coltraine got the Orientation Lectures and obviously they didn't do any good. So she needs to find some way to tactfully pound some goddamned cultural sensitivity into the brains of all the offworld teams. Quickly. Before the SGC turns into The Trust.

Calling Sara O'Neill is hard, but it has to be done. She actually manages to reach her on the first try, which surprises her a little. She identifies herself: Dr. Danielle Jackson, Colonel O'Neill's executor. Colonel O'Neill's remains are being interred at two o'clock next Thursday, if Sara wants to be there. (Dani makes a note to find someone to stand in for her if she's offworld a week from tomorrow.) Sara thanks her for letting her know. _Did you work with Jack?_ she asks. Polite conversation. The words of strangers. And she says "yes," and Sara says he was a good man. And Dani says: he was. The conversation is painful, but at least it's short. 

Amelia stops by her office (Amelia knows, of course, about 819). Amelia suggests going out for drinks. Drinks sound like a really good idea.

Amelia's favorite bar (well, everyone's at the SGC, really) is a quiet little place called Ground Zero, named that because it's right next to Cheyenne Mountain, and back in the dim dark days of the Cold War—a time Dani only knows from books; she didn't spend much time in the US until it was long over—the Mountain was a First Strike Zone, one of the first places the Russians (the Soviet Russians) would bomb. It's quietly shabby, decorated with photographs of atomic explosions (back when the bombs were small enough to detonate above ground) and photographs of ancient planes. Pretty much a military bar, but civilians aren't harassed so long as they behave themselves, and sometimes it's hard to tell the civilians from the military unless you spot the tags. Mufti and uniforms are pretty equally mixed. She and Amelia take a booth at the far back. Amelia orders a martini. Dani has Scotch.

"Fixed things?" Amelia asks, after their drinks come.

"Put the stuff back, yes. Fixed? No. I think it was only him. I _hope_ it was only him. But...how did he slip through the cracks? Why did he think it was acceptable?"

"You do your best, Dani. Some people are just assholes."

"We can't afford assholes, Melie. Why didn't Stevenson nail him? Or one of the others?"

Amelia shakes her head. "Trusted his judgment?"

And yeah, you're supposed to do that. Every SG Team is made up of specialists. And when it comes down to it, bottom line, every judgment call the Team Leader makes is based on trust. Trusting that their specialists know what they're talking about and are making the right call. But not in this case. And yes, okay, there _could_ be a situation that would call for stealing something from an indigenous population. Every possible situation happens. But this wasn't it, and Stevenson should have known it.

"I don't know," she says reluctantly. "Coltraine was new."

"Coming back?"

She sighs. "Oh, probably. Not for a while." And maybe she can have a few words with him before he goes through the Gate again.

"Well, drink up. It could have been worse."

Dani smiles bitterly and raises her glass. Oh yes. It can always be worse.

#

Thursday they're out again. It's a quietly hellish slog: the planet is currently uninhabited, but there are ruins to check out. Aside from that, conditions are miserable: drizzling and hovering around six degrees Celsius. Having come from an average 24 degrees Celsius (75 Fahrenheit) in the world on the other side of the Gate, the contrast is highly-unpleasant, even in their heavy foul-weather gear. Chilled, muddy (it's obviously been raining for weeks here), and numb from the wind blowing the fine rain into every chink in their rain gear.

Unfortunately, the ruins are interesting, because...hey. Pretty damned recent. And _Goa'uld_. There's nothing left but a big burned-over patch where the village once stood, but most of the temple's still there. Enough for Dani to tell it once belonged to Ba'al. (Who, as far as they know, is still out here.)

"This is—what? Two of Ba'al's worlds we've found abandoned?" she asks.

They're sheltering in the temple for their meal-break. Just when you start to count on trees, they betray you: 381 doesn't have any. Or at least not near the Stargate. Just rolling hills covered in long grass, which means they've spent most of the morning slipping and sliding up one side and _definitely_ sliding down the other. And on a sample and survey mission their packs are heavier than usual.

Sammy nods. "Yeah, about that," Cam says. He takes off his cap and wipes his face, trying—unsuccessfully—to dry it. It's too wet and windy, even here, to get the stove lit; they're eating cold MREs.

"But Ba'al's still alive," she says. "So why would he give up territory?"

They all look at Teal'c. "It is possible he has made an agreement to cede parts of his domain in exchange for territory elsewhere."

"Are these two worlds anywhere near each other?" Cam asks.

Sammy shrugs. "I'd have to check when we get back. Let's hope so."

Sammy and Teal'c get their samples (inevitable a _Goa'uld_ world would have _naquaadah_ , but it will probably be too dangerous to set up any kind of mining operation here), she and Cam spend the day trying to get the temple to give up its secrets. No particular luck. Odd, too, that it's been smashed and the village destroyed. That doesn't really fit in with Teal'c's theory of Ba'al having peacefully (as peacefully as the _Goa'uld_ do anything) swapped one chunk of galactic real estate for another. It also doesn't fit in with the way he abandoned the other planet: there he just _left,_ and the place wasn't destroyed.

"There's something going on and I want to know what," she says, sighing.

"Yeah, that'd be nice," Cam says. "You coming over tomorrow night?"

_Here is the seat of Belus, Lord of the Two Horns, Father of the Phoenix—_ She looks up from the stretch of wall she's translating. Ba'al's ritual titles. (She hates all the _Goa'uld_ on principle, and a few of them for personal reasons: Ba'al is one of the latter.) Tomorrow is Friday, and on Fridays SG-1 goes over to Cam's house. And she does things she really can't do. She looks back at the wall. And last week she climbed into his bed and he saved her from herself. It doesn't matter—she has learned—what you want. You can only have what you're willing to pay for. The price for this is too high. She shakes her head, still not looking at him. "Sorry. I really ought to look in at Freaks and Geeks. It's been too long." _—Lord of the Divine Fire, King of Lands, King of Heavens, Son of the Divine Sun, Ra—_

"Sure, sure," Cam says. "We'll miss you."

Under other circumstances it could almost be a joke: how could he, how could they, possibly miss someone they spend almost all their waking hours with? But the time off the clock is different. They all know that.

She doesn't answer.

She's as thorough as she can bear to be, but there's nothing here to find. No answers, only questions. They cut the mission short—the schedule calls for six hours, they're done in five. Not back much under the wire, though. Slogging through mud and over slippery grass is slow going. Just as they get to the Gate, the sky opens up in earnest. They're all drenched to the skin by the time they make it through to the Gate Room. They track alien rainwater halfway through the SGC, and thank god Sally sees the state they're in, and tells them to go shower and change before the post-mission physical. Dani's so cold she's exhausted—even the shower doesn't really warm her up.

She stays awake through the debriefing, though—lots of coffee—making her preliminary report. Why this planet is a poor risk for a mining operation. What information its evacuation and destruction gives them. She's not sure what General Landry thinks of it all.

Afterward, the workday is nearly over. Today—a rare occasion—she watches the clock, anxious to be gone. The three of them ride to the surface together, all feeling the same pull toward the sun, and she's sorry for Teal'c, trapped beneath the Mountain. She expects Cam to make his nearly-ritual remark about finding Teal'c a place to live off-Base, but he doesn't.

She drives home slowly, reveling in the heat. When she gets there, she takes a beer and a blanket and goes up onto the roof, the flat part where the telescope used to be set up. It's still in sunlight at this time of day, while the back deck is already shaded. She wants sunlight, to bake the last of rain and winter from her bones. She actually falls asleep up there, waking only when the temperature drops with dusk. Better sleep than she's had in a while: sleeping outside tricks her mind into thinking she's offworld, and she always sleeps well on missions. She goes down into the house, clears the answering machine of junk phone calls, rummages through the kitchen to see if there's anything to eat (not much, but the milk's still good, so she has a bowl of cereal). Then shower, a few more hours of catch-up (only six months behind on her reading now) then bed.

Awake three hours later, jolted from sleep to consciousness by an image so horrible it didn't even give her time to scream. Her chest aches. Her hands ache; they're balled into fists to smash through ice that doesn't exist except in her mind. And Cam behind the ice. If she closes her eyes even now, she can see it so clearly. Beneath the surface of a frozen lake; in her dream she'd been walking on the ice, trying to keep her balance, and she'd looked down, and seen him. Oh, wouldn't MacKenzie love to unriddle that one for her? Not that he'll ever hear about it. No one will.

But it's four o'clock when she's jarred to wakefulness, and dawn will come soon. An early start to her work-day, but it's not as if there isn't enough work to fill every hour she's got. She switches off both alarms and climbs out of bed. Still a little stiff from yesterday's hike in the cold. Covered with fading bruises. A battered woman, but it's her life that's battering her, not any person. And she's—what's the term?—a coenabler. She has no intention of getting out of this relationship.

Shower, coffee, dress. By then it's dawn. And barring some emergency, they'll be onworld all day. She needs to see if Amelia or Nyan can cover for her with Jerome tomorrow, just in case. Should have done that earlier. Never enough hours in the day.

She drives to the Mountain. Parked by 0530. Down to Level 19 by 0615 (through all the checkpoints, in and out of the Women's Changing Rooms). The day begins. Forty-five minutes later she's summoned to breakfast. Idle and not-so-idle gossip. Stevenson (Cam tells his waffles, just in passing) had no idea those artifacts were in Coltrane's pack. Dani nods. But once they were Earthside, the Major had taken responsibility for them. Of course. At least she knows exactly where the rot starts and stops on Sixteen now.

They discuss their plans for the weekend. Sammy's going to be off doing something involving an offroad motorcycle competition. Cam says he plans to do a little exploring and also see if he can successfully get all the way through _Wormhole X-Treme_ without being captured and brainwashed by the evil Deros (the telepathic lizardlike alien bad guys the X-Treme Team are always fighting, with a really irritating lack of success). Dani says she plans to wait for Jerome Kaminski (the piano tuner).

"All weekend?" Cam asks.

"Saturday," she says. "Sunday I'm going to..." she gestures vaguely "...do something."

"Nothing like planning ahead," Cam agrees.

#

Years ago, they used to hold Freaks and Geeks at a local restaurant, but all the Security people got so twitchy about things that now they rotate it among peoples' houses. She'll have to offer her place up for the next one: they have it every other week. It's just a party like any other (BYOB since it's moved to a private house, plus five bucks a head for pizza) except for one rule: no English can be spoken. It's a chance for the linguists to polish their foreign languages, especially the exotic ones, like Basque and Persian (and _Goa'uld_ , something they couldn't do in public) and for the engineers and physicists and others (a few do come) to speak their mother tongues.

It's actually a relief not to have to speak English for an evening. It wasn't her first language; she wasn't really fully fluent in it until she was five. Arabic, Greek, French, Italian, German—those were the languages she heard and spoke as a young child. Her parents spoke to her in Boharic and Latin and Hebrew; her mother sang her lullabies in Dutch. English was always an afterthought, spoken in the strange cold _foreign_ place she was always happy to leave. Tonight she speaks Persian (Classical Persian; the most widely-used modern dialect is Farsi) and Russian and Armenian and the Mandarin dialect of Chinese and Welsh and half-a-dozen of her other languages. And _Goa'uld_ , of course. People talk about nothing in particular. And play board games: _Trivial Pursuit_ becomes _really_ challenging when it's being played across six languages (and by a group of people who—among them—have almost no grasp of American popular culture). All evening she has a sense she's in the _wrong place._ She quashes it ruthlessly. This is where she belongs, not off trying to ruin other peoples' lives. Not even (oh, here's a thought) off trying to ruin her own.

The gathering breaks up around midnight. She committed to hosting it a fortnight from now. Assuming always (something tacitly understood) she's both alive and onworld. If she's one but not the other, they'll move to a backup location. If she's dead, her survivors will be using her house for the wake (always good to have a backup plan).

She lights the candles on the deck as soon as she goes in, then goes to make coffee. Maybe they'll have chased away the mosquitoes by the time it's ready: a hopeful thought.

She knows where she wishes she was. Unfair. Unfair to _want._ Especially knowing it's something so easily and inevitably taken away. Not by Cam. Just by Time. Maybe Coltraine was sane and normal when he came in, in which case, it only took him six weeks to decide looting temples was a good idea. It's true Cam has lasted an entire year—both alive and apparently possessed of sanity and grace—but what about _two_ years? ( _If Anubis will give you another year_ , a part of her mind says. And oh, she doubts it.) She's honest enough to grant the logical fallacy there: if they're all going to be dead in another year (probable) and if Cam will still be _Cam_ for another year (fifty-fifty odds there, maybe even sixty-forty) what harm is there in doing what he wants. Being his..."baby." His _hemet, meryt._ If they're going to die, shouldn't somebody's last days be happy?

A nice thought, if she didn't think _she_ might be what could push him over the edge into becoming...not-Cam. If she didn't think she might have to survive him, and she's pretty sure she's reached her quota of loss on that scale. Exceeded it, even. Nothing would be left. And something might have to be.

She knows, by now, Sammy told the truth that long-ago day. No matter what the rules used to be, they've changed now. Gate Teams fuck, canoodle, kiss, and love. She's been watching for it ever since that conversation. People think she's oblivious. Yes and no. She ignores things that don't interest her, or are unimportant to her (and so much is). When she _wants_ to know something, however, she can almost always figure it out. Faces lie, words lie, voices lie. Bodies don't. It takes an expert, working hard, to lie with the way they stand, walk, move, gesture. Most people can't manage it. Certainly not the members of the Gate Teams. Some of what she's seen has surprised her (who would have believed Thomas, Behrens, and Gallegos were a threesome?) but the only thing that's really shocked her is that the relationships exist at all, in all the glorious permutation of human desire. She has no idea of how public they are, how explicitly-known. That doesn't concern her. Nor does she know whether most of the people involved are married, or to whom, since that doesn't concern her either. She wanted to know if the Gate Teams were having sex within the Teams, and yes, they are. It doesn't affect her situation in the slightest. Although it probably means she could date Benjy Balinsky if she wanted to. (She doesn't.)

#

Jerome (Kaminski) arrives with commendable promptness (meaning one o'clock) on Saturday and thanks her profusely for giving him an excuse to absent himself from his son's birthday party. She thinks that's odd at first, until Jerome explains Joshua (his youngest) is seven, and Joshua's entire class (thirty-five children) is at Jerome's house. In that case, she's pretty sure she sympathizes.

It's at least three hours before the piano is tuned to his satisfaction. He isn't dawdling; he's a perfectionist; which is just as well, since even if her playing is rusty, her ear for music isn't. At least the climate here isn't humid. Nothing worse for a piano. But it's been moved twice, and the second time wasn't by professionals, and, well, pianos aren't the most forgiving of instruments. But finally he stops tweaking and twisting and poking.

"Why don't you play something for me, Doc? Now that I've got your baby off her deathbed?"

"I haven't touched a keyboard in months," she warns.

Longer, really. But she sits down and stretches her fingers across the keys. The earliest pieces are the easiest, the ones she's played for years. But she's very much out of practice; the unfamiliar stretch makes her hands ache. She hears every clumsiness. Jerome is pleased, though. She's glad someone is. After he leaves, she practices for another half an hour. Not music, now. Scales and drills. She needs to get the muscles back in training before she can really move on. By the time she stops, her hands ache, but she's satisfied. She goes off to make coffee, regarding the rose-hedge with pleasure: it's still there (for the moment) but it's withered, dead, and brown. She thinks she might phone Sammy; see if she's back yet. Hear about her day. Plan, perhaps, to do something together tomorrow.

She opens her refrigerator, contemplating its contents. Milk, orange juice, beer, bottled water. The freezer holds ice cubes and ice cream and half-a-dozen frozen Snickers bars. Not a lot here to make dinner out of. She turns to her shelves. She won't starve: she has Granola bars and Powerbars and peanut butter and cereal and raisins. She could make a sandwich. Assuming, of course, she had bread.

She's debating between going to the store, settling for cereal, or ordering takeout (in which case, what kind?) when her doorbell rings. She goes over to it (frowning: who the hell would be ringing her doorbell at almost five on a Saturday afternoon?) and cranes around to peer out through the window beside the door.

Cam. 

She feels pleasure, relief, irritation all at once. What the hell is he doing here? She opens the door. "Don't tell me you were in the neighborhood," she warns.

He grins at her. "I was. Me and Teal'c've been hanging out all day. I just dropped him off."

"Okay." It doesn't explain his presence here, but she steps back to let him in.

"Got some stuff in the car for you," he says, turning around and going back down the steps. 

She thinks about just closing the door and locking it. But that would be irrational. Of course, very few of her reactions to Cameron Mitchell can be called rational, even by the most charitable observer. Even she admits that. Of course, apparently he's fond of her, so apparently he's crazy too. She'd talk to Sammy about it, but she's afraid of what she'd hear.

He comes back up the steps a couple of minutes later. "Stuff" is apparently contained in a large cooler. And he's got something tucked under his arm. Book. Yes, almost certainly.

"Leftovers," Cam explains, walking inside.

"You had Teal'c and you had leftovers?" she asks.

"I know how to cook for Teal'c by now," Cam says comfortably.

She closes the door and follows him into the kitchen. "And the leftovers are here...why?"

"Because you weren't there," Cam says, as if stating the obvious. "Piano all tuned up now?"

She flexes her hands, which still ache just a little. "Piano's in shape. I'm not. Don't expect any concerts for a while."

"Something to look forward to, then." He's reached the kitchen and is unpacking the cooler. Fried chicken. Potato salad. Some kind of green thing.

"What's that?"

"Cold pickled green bean salad."

"Hm."

"You'll like it."

Something wrapped in foil. She unwraps it. Half a loaf of cornbread. She wonders how much he made; Teal'c loves Cam's cornbread.

The last thing he takes out is a cake pan. There's half a cake in it; she can see through the lid. Oh, god, it's his Red Velvet Cake. There's enough food here for _four people._

"Oh, and I found this the other day," he says, picking up the book that he'd set on the counter. _Empirical Crypto-Linguistics: A Neuroprogramming Primer for the Semiotician._ Small press, limited-edition, out of print. She was complaining to Amelia—when?—about a month ago, she thinks—that she was probably going to spend the next six months chasing a copy around the secondary market until she found one.

"You must take me to that bookstore of yours some day," she says, regarding him sardonically.

Cam's smile doesn't fade. If anything, it grows wider. "Glad to," he says. Whether the bookstore exists or not.

"Well, you've saved me half a year of frustration. Stay for dinner," she says. Though that's not why she asked.

And he agrees, and she spends most of an hour clearing off the dining room table, moving the books upstairs to her study, and Cam helps, which means he gets to see the study. He never has before.

"This is where you always are when I call you and you say of course you're going to bed," he says.

"Pretty much." It's the room over the garage, and it's the _size_ of the garage, and every single foot of available wall—floor to ceiling, and around the door, and under the windows—is covered with shelves. There's a free-standing bookshelf down the middle of the room, too. "I need more shelf space," she sighs.

"Baby, you're going to need a second _house_ soon," Cam says. He doesn't ask if she reads all these. Most people do.

And they go back downstairs, and Cam finds her tablecloth, and she sets the table (she can't cook, she has no pots and pans, but she has a Limoges service for twelve; one of Life's little ironies). And he's right. The pickled green bean salad _is_ good. Everything is. He tells her about the movies she missed last night (Sammy chose musicals, Teal'c picked the movies: _Singing In The Rain,_ because he knows it's one of her favorites; _The Singing Detective,_ because Teal'c has eccentric tastes; and _The Wizard of Oz,_ because the man has _no sense at all_ ).

"He said it was one of your favorites," Cam says.

"No." Not any more. Just as well she didn't go.

She tells him about Freaks and Geeks, and in the middle of explaining about the Trivial Pursuit tournament, she realizes he has an odd look on his face. She stops. "Cam?"

"Sorry, baby. You kinda lost me there."

She plays back her words in her head. "Oh." She repeats the story in English. Not a mistake she usually makes, but she wasn't paying attention, and it hadn't _happened_ in English.

He cocks his head. "How many languages do you speak?"

"To, um, actually have a conversation in? Only about twenty-eight or so. The rest of them are really reconstructions: I can read them, and I've established a theoretical basis for pronunciation, but without a time machine, we'll never really know what Sumerian sounded like. Or Phoenician."

"Which one was first?" he asks. He sounds curious, and she laughs.

"None of them. I don't have a first language. If you want to know what language I spoke my first words in, I have no idea. Maybe Arabic, maybe French."

"Not raised here?"

Idle conversation—small talk—but she feels a little off-balance anyway. Almost frustrated, as if she's trying to make a connection she can't manage. "You've seen my file, Cam," she says dismissively. "I was raised a lot of places." She gets to her feet to take her plate into the kitchen.

"It doesn't really go back that far," he says quietly. "It starts when you're twelve."

She glances at him sharply. He shrugs, just a little. "When they were clearing me for the 302 program, they interviewed my _parents,_ " he says.

She sets the plate back down. "Why?" she asks, puzzled.

Another shrug. "They like to be thorough. So when they 'vet you, they interview pretty much everybody you've ever known. Nothing I'd see, though."

"As my Team Leader."

"Yes." Cam has his 'serious face' on, indicating they're having an important conversation, and one that isn't the most fun he's ever had, but they're going to get through it because it has to be had. She's not entirely sure why. He's known her for a year—he's had access to her file for a year. Why are they talking about it now?

"So what _do_ you see?" she asks, sitting down, because ever since Sammy dropped that particular bombshell on her, she's wondered. And she has no real idea of quite how they've gotten here from idle conversation on how they spent their respective Friday nights, but it's actually a bit of a relief.

"A summary. Teal'c's is pretty short." A quick smile. "Generally, an overview: born, raised, schools. Special training. For this, and the 302 program, who they talked to in order to clear you—that'd be a list of names, addresses, relationships."

"What they said?"

He shakes his head. "I'm sure that's in a file somewhere, baby. But I haven't seen it, and neither has Sam."

Well, that's a relief. "But they wanted to talk to somebody who knew me before I was twelve." She really doubts they couldn't find Nick—Janet did. Who was it that wasn't being cooperative that day: Nick or his doctors? And why wasn't her file ever updated?

"Like I said. They like to be thorough."

"Too bad for them Catherine had already hired me." She casts her mind back to the original question that started all this. "I spent a lot of time out of the country before I was eight. Between eight and twelve, I didn't live here at all." She picks up her plate—and his, this time—and walks into the kitchen.

"Alexandria," she says, when Cam follows her in. He looks puzzled. "Weren't you going to ask me where I was born?"

"Don't want to pry," he says. And it's true. From anyone else, all of these not-exactly-questions (some questions, both actual and rhetorical, some observations) would be an opening gambit in a conversational game of emotional manipulation. But not with Cam. And there's something about him that makes her (and if her, then obviously _anyone_ ) want to tell him things. Just now, for example, she's told him things she's never even told Sammy. Not that they're secrets. And Sammy knows a lot about her past—Sammy even saw Dani's parents killed, courtesy of the Gamekeeper's virtual reality. But she's not sure even Sammy knows where she was born. And Dani might, in other circumstances, with someone else, feel she had somehow been tricked into giving up these private benchmarks of history. Not here. Not now.

"Alexandria," she repeats.

"Do you miss it?" Cam asks.

"I haven't been back in...twelve years," she says wistfully. The last summer before she left the Institute. After that she was at Berkeley, then Catherine came. "Coffee?" she asks.

"Why don't we sit out for a while?" Cam suggests, so they go out to the deck. "Better for you out here now?" he asks. He leans against the railing, she sits in one of the chairs.

"Much," she says. The sun is gone, but the sky is still full of light. Light for another couple of hours, dimming so slowly the eye will be tricked into thinking it can see when it can't. Any change that's slow enough is imperceptible.

"I miss grass," Cam says after a few minutes.

"Thought you would have gotten enough of that on Thursday." On Mud Planet of the Eternal Swales.

_"Lawns,"_ he specifies. "Yards. _Back_ yards."

"Have mine," she says. "I'm not using it. Just as long as you aren't planning to plant flowers."

"No, no. Thinking more of teaching Teal'c to play touch football." His smile is lazy, absent, as he looks out over the yard.

"Teal'c will kill you."

"I'll tell him to go easy on me."

"Yeah. You understand his grasp of idiom fails him at the worst possible times?"

"That is something that has actually not escaped me," Cam admits, looking over at her and smiling. After a few minutes he turns around and hitches himself up onto the railing. His feet dangle enough that he could kick them back and forth, and somehow she expects that, but he doesn't. He stays perfectly still.

They sit in silence for a while. It won't really be dark until after eight o'clock (twenty-hundred, the part of her mind that's spent ten years beneath Cheyenne Mountain footnotes), but the light is dimming. Cam seems content to sit here, perfectly quiet, for as long as she does, and she tries to school her mind into safe—appropriate—channels, but there don't seem to be any. She thinks of a conversation she had with Sammy last week, a moment of frivolity (normalcy) snatched out of an otherwise-trying week.

_"So how do you like the afghan?" Sammy asked._

_"Nice. It's...nice. Why don't you have one?" she asked in return, remembering Sammy's question, and Cam's reply:_ Have to negotiate your own knitting with the family. __

_"I never qualified," Sammy answered._

_"There are qualifications?"_

_"Well...usually. Cam comes from a pretty large family."_

_"So I've gathered. And?"_

_"And, so, usually the women in the family who knit don't really need to look outside the family for people to knit for."_

It didn't really take an anthropologist to parse that explanation. The women of Clan Mitchell only knit for family members. Which was why Sammy had never gotten an afghan; she isn't a member of Cam's family. But _she_ has. Dani wonders just when Cam commissioned it, and what he said to get it. She hopes it was nothing more than the truth. Whatever that is, because even Dani isn't really sure. And she knows Cam can't tell his family the _real_ truth: that she'd die for Cam—gladly—and he for her, and she's never so much as kissed him. She wonders if they'd understand that truth if he could tell it. She wonders, actually, what they think he _does._ Sammy's brother thinks she's involved in a Deep Space Telemetry Program (something scientific involving radio telescopes and a lot of jargon). Dani's cover story is doing cryptographic analysis of deep-space radio signals for the same (nonexistent) program—a cover story she's rarely called upon to offer up, but she has it if it's needed. 

But Cam's a pilot. She wonders what his family thinks he's doing these days. She wonders why she's got an afghan. Cam's a member of the only family she has left: SG-1. It's interesting to contemplate him staking a claim in reverse, attempting to draw her into the sphere of his mundane life. But to suggest he's "staking a claim" is too dynamic an interpretation. It's forceful, and in the past year she can count on the fingers of one hand the times when Cam has pushed her into doing something _right now._ All offworld, and all warranted. No, if anything, this is an...offer.

She closes her eyes tightly, thinking of the happiest time of her life. Living on Abydos was like coming home, with her sister and her brother and a suddenly-inherited network of cousins. "Cousin" is too simple a word: Abydan has the words to name a hundred different degrees of relationship: First Wife's Child, Second Wife's Child, First Concubine's Child; every degree of cousin-hood had a name. She'd never been alone in bed, either; Sha're had been a little shocked at the notion. She'd slept with Sha're, and Sha're's cousin Khemsa, and a couple of the serving-maids, who were also a part of Sha're's extended family, all together on the Women's Side, where the unmarried women of Nagada slept. Some of the married ones, too. The Woman's Side was inviolate; no man was allowed to enter there, and husbands who overstepped their privileges could find themselves in the position of needing to go to Kasuf and beg for permission to speak to their wives. Nagada had been a family. It needed to be. Ra might come at any time, and, though he only took children as his tribute, men died in the _naquaadah_ pits and women died in childbirth, and anyone might die in the desert. The village must always be ready to step in, close ranks, and care for the survivors.

Ever since she returned to Earth, she'd missed that closeness. Even with SG-1, she'd been lonely. She'd hoped, like Teal'c, someday the work would be done and she could go home. Maybe Teal'c still can.

She wonders if Cam's family is like the village. Maybe a little. The American South is one of the few places in the United States that acknowledges extended kinship ties; in that sense, Southern families are at least a little like tribes. She wonders if he knows the symbolism of his offering. Probably. She suspects, if she put her mind to it, she could make this into a Venn diagram: Cam's family and SG-1 and her-and-Cam and normal people all the places where the sets share members and all the places where they don't touch at all. But at root, the symbol is a simple equation: Cam has offered her a token of tribal membership. It's nice, really. She likes the idea of belonging somewhere, even if it's only in theory. What hurts, the way a bruise hurts, is that the universe keeps arranging matters so those places stop existing. If she were as paranoid as MacKenzie thinks, as prone to magical thinking, she'd burn the afghan immediately, on the theory that by doing so she was protecting the Earth from destruction. She's not that crazy. Yet.

"Penny for 'em?" Cam says.

She opens her eyes. Darker now. "I like the afghan," she says. "Cake?"

He smiles, and slides down off the railing, and they go inside.

"Coffee?" she asks, and he nods. "Mind if I take a look?" he asks, gesturing toward her CD collection. She waves him off in that direction, and she goes into the kitchen. Her house, so she's playing hostess. She takes out the ice cream, and opens the cake box. Swipes her finger through a corner of the icing and sticks it in her mouth.

"Caught you," Cam says, walking in. He's holding a jewelcase in his hand. She recognizes it: one of her Son House recordings. "Mind if I put this on?"

"Go ahead," she says. "Ice cream?"

"No, just cake."

She puts the ice cream back—it will take too long to soften, and she wants dessert—and starts the coffee brewing. A few moments later, music starts to play.

_'Can't tell my future, and I can't tell my past. Can't tell my future, and I can't tell my past. Lord, it seems like every minute, sure gonna be my last—'_

"Future Blues." Oddly appropriate. She cuts two squares of cake and lifts them onto plates. The coffee finishes, and she makes up two mugs—if she didn't know how Cam takes his coffee by now, she wouldn't have been paying attention. She loads mugs, plates, forks onto a tray and takes them out into the living room. Cam is sprawled out on the couch, head back, eyes closed. Listening.

The bluesman's voice is raw, elemental. The Delta Blues is the music of cane and cotton, of oppression, repression. African rhythms, preserved over generations, but a uniquely American musical idiom. It's pain of the rawest sort transformed into a kind of beauty. She'd played some for Teal'c once, back in the first year after he came to Earth. Halfway through the first track he'd told her to stop. She realized she'd upset him, but she didn't know how, and he wouldn't explain. He never has, and she's never played the blues for him again. She thinks she knows now, though. She's learned more of Teal'c's world since. _Pain should not be beautiful._ But sometimes it has to be, for the _Tau'ri_. If they can't find beauty in the thing that's killing them, they'd never find the strength to survive, to help _someone_ survive. It's one way of beating odds that can't be beaten. The Jaffa have others.

She sets the tray down and Cam sits up. He looks a little dreamy; in thrall to the music. This is the "Complete Recordings"—three hours of music, all the variations, assuming he's loaded all the discs into her player. They'll be here for a while, and that's fine with her.

Shouldn't be.

Is.

The living room curtains are open, and the sliders to the deck. There was just enough light to see by when she came in, but now the light shining through from the kitchen seems much stronger; the day is fading. Cam sets his plate back on the coffee table, and a few minutes later she sets her mug on the coffee table, and she sits back, and he puts his arm around her shoulder and she leans against him. There's no one here. No one to see. Soon the player moves on to the next disc, and the only light in the room is coming from the kitchen.

"I miss crickets," Cam says randomly.

"We have coyotes," she says.

He snorts faintly with amusement; his breath ruffles her hair. "Not quite the same."

"Coyotes are bigger." She thinks about it. "Usually."

He considers for a moment. "I read that one."

They weren't quite crickets. And SG-1 wouldn't have gone at all, except for everyone's favorite, Unexplained Energy Readings. The mission didn't call for full pressure suits, but it did require hazmat gear and oxygen: unacceptable levels of radiation on the other side. Not lethal, providing they kept their visit to under an hour. And their gear on. What nobody mentioned—because the MALP hadn't seen them—was that the place was full of giant bugs. Any time they encounter giant bugs of any sort, things don't go well (apparently), and this was no exception. The energy readings turned out to be natural—or, at least, not to come from any device—and the Giant Alien Crickets were overfriendly. They'd barely gotten back to the Gate with their suits intact.

"Still want crickets?" she asks.

"I like crickets."

And she shouldn't be sitting here in the dark with him, listening to songs about loss and love. Ordinarily she'd just get up and leave. Unfortunately, this is her house—at least, it's where she lives—and she can't really do that. Nor is she going to order him out of it.

And tomorrow is Sunday, and the next day is Monday, and there's another Department Heads meeting and she'll spend another week falling behind again. And Thursday's the funeral (Burial. Sham burial.) and it never feels as if she has time to _do_ anything any more. Maybe she should go in tomorrow and get a head-start on the week. It's the only way she'll ever be able to keep up. But if she does, she'll never get her reading done, and that's important too.

"Why aren't there more hours in the day?" she asks, straightening up.

"If there were, I'm pretty sure you'd just work," he says.

"I could use the extra time," she says. She gets to her feet, picks up the tray, goes into the kitchen, turning on one of the lamps as she goes. She pours herself a mug of coffee; hesitates. It's pretty fried; she'd drink it, but she wouldn't ask anyone else to. Glances at the clock and blinks in surprise. It's nearly ten (twenty-two hundred, and never again will she be able to simply tell time on one clock or the other). Walks back out into the living room. "More coffee?"

He gets to his feet. "Sure. You don't need to make fresh, though."

"It's been—"

"Sitting. I know. And you know what they say about Air Force coffee."

"That the reason they make it so strong is so the pilots won't need planes?" she asks, and he smiles. "I don't think it's that strong," she says.

"That is because _you_ are special," he says. They walk back into the kitchen together, and he fixes himself another cup, and they both have seconds on the cake, right out of the pan, without plates or forks. "You can get the dishes back to me Friday," he says. (That gives her six days to try to figure out some place else to be. She might even manage it.) She walks him to the door and lets him out. And this is the place, in books and movies, where there'd be a goodnight kiss. But she's never kissed Cam and she never intends to.

It wouldn't be safe.

#

On Monday, for the first time since she can remember, Felger's actually _quiet_ in the Department Heads meeting. It doesn't help a lot. But some. Also there are doughnuts, which is nice.

For some reason, _now_ General Landry has decided to make the apprehension of Vala one of their main priorities. In order to question her. He's decided they should make another try at approaching the Lucian Alliance to see if they can be persuaded to disclose information about her ( _because we got on so well with the Lucians the last time we contacted them,_ Dani thinks), and also to contact the _Tok'ra_ , both for similar information and to check out any information they might have on the eight Gate addresses she got from Osiris. These missions are pending (meaning they can't find the _Tok'ra_ at the moment, and they're looking for a minimum-risk approach to the Lucians). SG-1 hasn't got a mission until Friday. Her week will be busy anyway.

#

_Solomon Grundy, Born on a Monday, Christened on a Tuesday, Married on a Wednesday, Took ill on Thursday, Worse on Friday, Died on Saturday, Buried on Sunday, This is the end of Solomon Grundy..._

The funeral isn't on a Sunday. And it isn't an actual funeral. But they bury an empty coffin on a Thursday about a week and a half after Thor has taken all that's left of Jack O'Neill away with him. She's chosen the coffin, and with Graham's help she's made the arrangements with the particular department of the Air Force that handles these things. So there's an honor guard at the gravesite. She's there with SG-1. Cam and Sammy in uniform, she and Teal'c in funeral black. An odd gathering for a weekday afternoon in a quiet public cemetery. But she's sure there have been stranger.

Sara is there, and a man she introduces as her father, and a woman Dani doesn't know: Sara gives her name, but no relationship. She met Sara once, though not to speak to, almost ten years ago: because of the crystal creature that had first impersonated Jack, then Charlie. She doesn't know how Jack explained things to Sara afterward. There's a Catholic priest, too (Sara brought him), which disturbs Dani a little. The priest reads out a funeral Mass. The coffin is covered in a blanket of white roses; she doesn't know who sent it. Her own arrangement is a wreath of laurel leaves; it looks plain but she likes the symbolism: they crowned heroes with laurel in Ancient Greece. She stares at the marker on the grave beside the open one. _Beloved son._ Jack's marker isn't finished yet, but when it is, it will only bear his name. Jack liked his privacy.

The only other people there besides the honor guard and the representatives from Jack's two families are the people from the cemetery. She supposes they aren't sextons, since this isn't a churchyard. Once the formalities, sacred and military, have been completed, they lower the coffin into the grave. There's a machine for that. The excavated earth lies, neatly piled, beneath a green tarp off to one side. They'll fill in the grave in once everybody's gone.

Making small-talk with Sara will be awkward. There's little she can say. She can't tell her _how_ she knew Jack, or what they did together, and any of Sara's guesses she can neither confirm nor deny. But she owes Sara closure. She walks toward her.

#

Somebody's been watching them. Not your garden-variety looky-loo, because every time Cam looks around (discreetly), he can't see who it is, but he can for damned sure feel the eyes on the back of his neck. And he just can't figure out who'd be that interested. Anybody in-the-loop enough to be after him, or Sam, or Teal'c, or Dani, probably knows this is a fake funeral, and Sara O'Neill's just a schoolteacher who lives with her dad in Winter Park. Nothing but normal there.

But _something's_ going on. And he knows Teal'c's picking up on it too, because the big guy's looking a little twitchy. So when the whole thing's finally over, and Little Miss goes over to talk to Mrs. O'Neill—not an easy conversation to have, but Sam's with her to back her up—Cam tells Teal'c he's going to have a quiet look around and Teal'c should keep an eye on everyone. If there's somebody spying on them, he wants to know who, and why. Might be something as innocent as a journalist who's watched too much television, but Cam doesn't really think so. 

He heads off among the gravestones, trying not to walk across any of the graves, because that would just be creepy. It's strange, how you can pretty much tell exactly what part of the country you're in just from looking at a graveyard. Down home the markers would be bigger. Cenotaphs and obelisks and white marble angels. Flowers on most of the graves, year-round. Here? Row on row of little granite headstones, or bronze plaques set right into the ground. It doesn't seem quite as respectful, somehow. But even here there are one or two mausoleums. And as he approaches one, he catches a flash of movement. He's meant to see it. He stops.

A boy—he's about Cassie's age, Cam thinks—steps out into view. He makes a gesture—quick—and steps back out of sight.

It's one familiar to Cam—now. The military hand-signal for "follow." And call him an idiot, but that's what he's going to do. He looks behind him. The others are all a couple of hundred yards away by now, almost at the cars. Probably wondering where the hell he's gotten to.

He reaches the mausoleum. The boy's leaning against the side, waiting for him. Cam stops. "Don't worry," the kid says. "I'm alone."

Cam frowns. There's something odd here, and he can't quite put his finger on it. "Okay," he says. "And I'm here."

The kid smiles, and there's just something _wrong_ about it in a way that makes Cam wish he had a gun. But who brings a gun to a funeral? 

"Yeah. Wanted to see who they got."

"Got?" Oh, yeah, he's so far at sea now he can't even see the _shore._

"To take care of my kids." There's a beat of silence, and Cam can see the kid can see he isn't getting it. The kid shrugs. "SG-1."

And oh lord, Cam thinks he's starting to get it now. But he could be wrong. And he doesn't want to say anything if he is. The boy smiles again—briefly—and if Cam's right, it all makes sense now. Why he doesn't look quite...right. Why he'd want to see Cam.

"It isn't every day you get to see your own funeral," the kid says. Throwing him another bone.

"Well, you're not actually in that box," Cam says. And he's praying as hard as he's ever prayed in his life: _please, God, if You've ever loved me, I won't ever ask You for anything else ever in my life, but please, please, don't let Dani come looking for me._

Because she'll know in an instant what it's taken Cam this long to guess.

"Ah?" the boy—O'Neill—asks, raising his eyebrows.

"It's kind of complicated. And classified," Cam says. Because there's always a chance he could be wrong, here.

O'Neill laughs—short sharp bark of laughter, nothing like any teenager ever born. "Yeah. It always is. Not that I care about the details."

"So. Why'd you come back?"

"Oh, you know. This and that. See if you were taking care of —them."

_No,_ Cam thinks. _Not "them."_ And he's damned glad he read one not-exactly-mission file in particular and gladder still he had a certain conversation with Teal'c. It makes it easier to read between the lines. Although he thinks he might have guessed anyway. There's no doubt in his mind now.

"I'm taking care of her, sir," Cam says softly. "The best way I know how. And them. We won't let you down."

He can't tell what O'Neill's thinking. Nothing shows. "Good. What's your name?"

"Cameron Mitchell, sir."

Another brief smile crosses the young-old face. "Lose the 'sir,' Mitchell. I'm retired. Very retired. I intend to keep it that way." He turns to go. "You can reach me at the cabin. You'd better have the same definition of 'emergency' as I do."

And while Cam's trying to decide what to do with information that—all things considered—he'd rather not have, O'Neill walks away. A few steps, and he's slouching along like any ordinary teenager. Nothing to give away the fact the man inside the body is anything but.

Cam turns and walks—quickly—down to where the cars are parked.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Attempted) bad sex between Dani and Cam. the usual trauma and the effects of trauma. Very bad language.


	9. JULY 2006—AUGUST 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Going through the Stargate is not for wimps. Neither is life at the SGC. Cam phones his family, SG-1 pays a visit to King Arkon The First, then goes to Kelowna for the third (and last) time. Jonas Quinn is still awesome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter specific warnings

Friday they go out. And not on the mission she's spent three days prepping them for, either. That gets scrubbed while they're standing on the ramp; SG-14 is in trouble and they're needed for SAR.

Search and Rescue missions are always fun. The mission doesn't wait to go bad until after you get there. It's gone bad before you start. And the nature of SAR is that you can't take the time to prepare: you need to go, and go _now,_ or there might not be anybody to rescue.

SG-14 is a First Contact Team. It's led by Major Heffron, a four-year veteran of the Gate. His team went out yesterday afternoon (while she was at the funeral). It was supposed to be a six-hour mission. At four hours, they requested permission to extend their stay, getting another ten hours. At 0400, they were overdue, and the SGC began attempting to raise Major Heffron. At 0600 they succeeded. He was at the extreme edge of his range, but requested radio silence for one hour. At 0700 the SGC tried again and got a solid contact, though it broke off in the middle. All they know is that Heffron and Lieutenant Kemp are pinned down in a sea-cave, and the water is rising. It's 0715 now, and they're getting all the briefing they have time for. Heffron's team is mix-and-match; all with at least a year of experience, but 14 was put together from other teams and it hasn't been together very long. Their cultural specialist is their newest member. She looks through the mission briefing on PDY-132. It should be Dr. Spieler....

"What moron let Suzanne Kiplinger go through the Gate?" she demands.

"That moron would be me, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says blightingly.

She stares at him in disbelief. Dr. Suzanne Kiplinger (Cultures of the Sea Peoples) has been at the SGC for six years. She has _never_ been through the Gate. She's certainly never completed GTO &T, which is a prerequisite. GTO&T is a six-week course, and Suzanne is a member of Dani's department; she'd need Dani's recommendation to apply, and she'll get it about the time Hell freezes rock-solid.

"Dr. Spieler broke his ankle on his son's skateboard on Wednesday. The preliminaries from 132 indicated the remains of a Mediterranean civilization. Dr. Kiplinger was qualified, and has, ah, been requesting permission to go offworld." (Graham's the one who explains. Landry is still glaring at her.)

Requesting permission. And not—obviously—through her Department Head. If Heffron and Kemp are in the cave, that means Suzanne and Sergeant Calloway are missing. Suzanne had better pray she's dead, Dani thinks, because if she isn't, she's going to wish she was. There isn't really enough time to review the mission data, or to change their gear. The water's rising where Major Heffron is. 

"Let's go," Cam says.

They add rope and extra first aid supplies to their packs.

#

"Ritual site in current use," Dani says as they exit the Event Horizon. The Stargate is surrounded by a spiral pattern of white loaf-shaped stones. Several of the stones are garlanded with flowers. Fresh flowers. So, oddly, is the MALP. "So this place is inhabited." The briefing 14 got said it wasn't.

"Wonder how we missed that?" Cam asks.

She looks around. They're near the ocean. Grass. Rocks. A sheer drop to the water. She stays well back from the edge; she hates heights. A few more centuries of erosion, and they can write this world off: the Stargate's going to fall into the sea.

"The flowers aren't local. Maybe 14 interrupted a seasonal pilgrimage," she says.

Cam nods. It's a possibility. "Sam, you got a lock on the Major's GPS yet?"

"This way," Sammy says.

They spread out. Teal'c's in the lead; they want to catch any tracks before they trample them. Dani's cudgeling her brain, trying to remember everything she knows about the Mycenaean Empire. It had trading partnerships with Egypt and Greece. It ruled the Mediterranean for an extended (and still debated) period of time, until its power was smashed by the Thera explosion (also still debated). It had ties to the _Goa'uld_ , since Linear A is a _Goa'uld_ script, the reason why it's never been translated. (Not publicly, anyway.) This is the second Mycenaean transplant civilization they've encountered. The first was P3X-797. The planet of the Touched.

Cam tries to raise Major Heffron or Lieutenant Kemp on the radio. No go. But there are lots of reasons for that. The radios could be damaged, missing, out of reach. Suzanne and Sergeant Calloway aren't answering either.

Three kliks up the coast. Half an hour since Heffron's transmission. She scans the coastline ahead, looking for clues. Someone left the flowers, and left them recently. So where are they? Heffron and Kemp said they were pinned down…

"Fuck," she says. Teal'c's seen it too; the others are looking closer to home. Everyone stops. "Who's got binoculars?"

Sammy passes her a pair, she squints through them, trying to find the range. Oh, but there it is. A pentekonter. The ancestor of the trireme. She doesn't see a sail, and the oars are shipped. But it means at least fifty unfriendly natives are around here somewhere—a pentekonter was a warship. She passes the glasses back.

"Cycladic warship," she says, pointing toward what is—without the binoculars—only a smudge on the headland. "Fifty oarsmen, plus archers. Think Vikings, not _Spartacus_ —the oarsmen won't be slaves, they'll be noblemen. Or they would be on Earth."

"Got it," Cam says. "What's the range?"

"Back home, they'd have navigated by following the coastline, not venturing out into open water. No compass. A couple of hundred miles, maybe."

"Longboats?"

She shakes her head. "They'd beach the ships to land, or anchor in shallow water and wade ashore."

Cam nods again, and they hurry on. They reach the place where they have the GPS fix. Still no radio contact. But apparently they're right on top of Major Heffron. Or his equipment. Or his body.

Cam goes to the edge of the cliff to look, and when he comes back, his jaw is set. "He said sea-cave. Water's already covered the cave entrance—if it's here," he says.

"There might be an air-pocket inside," she says. "Someone has to go see. Me," she says, dropping her pack. "I'm lightest." She pulls off her glasses, puts them into their case. Drops them onto her pack. "I'll go down, find the entrance, swim in. See if I can find them." She pulls off her vest, jacket, shirt, boots. If she has to swim, she doesn't want the extra weight.

Sammy ties the rope around her waist. Teal'c will hold the other end. At the last minute, she remembers to drop her gunbelt as well. No point in soaking down her weapon.

"Be careful," Cam says, and she smiles faintly.

"If I tug on the line three times, try to pull me back; it means I'm running out of air."

Teal'c wraps the line around his wrists, and she walks over to the edge of the cliff. Swallows hard. Even with the risen sea providing a false ground, it's still a long drop. She grasps the line and steps over.

She's rappled before; she always hates it. It's better once the cliff's above her head; she can stare at the wall in front of her and concentrate on that. It's hard doing this in socks, but not as bad as it could be; the cliff isn't rock, it's a kind of clay. Sammy is watching from the edge of the cliff; Cam's standing guard. When she's just above the water she signals she's going to jump in; Teal'c gives her a slack rope and she kicks free.

No matter how warm the air is, the water is damned cold.

But she finds the cave entrance almost immediately. She signals for more rope, treading water and panting to hyperoxygenate, then dives down and swims forward. Praying there's air to find. Living men at the end of her swim. (Enough rope.) The salt burns her eyes, but she keeps them open; she needs to see. The water she swims through is utterly black, but fortunately, claustrophobia is not one of her problems. She swims as fast as she can, as far as she can. Her lungs are burning, and the rope is paying out behind her. They won't let her drown here. She knows that. They're timing her.

Light. 

She swims toward it, breaking the surface just as everything start to grey out. Major Heffron drags her out onto a small ledge, and she gasps and coughs and chokes for almost a minute until she can speak. She gives one sharp tug to the line. _Safe._

"Rescue party," she finally says.

Heffron and Kemp look to be in pretty good shape, as far as she can see without her glasses. The light is coming from a flashlight wedged into a crack in the wall.

"Thank god," Heffron says. "We thought you weren't coming."

"We always come, Major," she says. "We tried to raise you on the radio."

He holds it up in disgust. "Used the Lieutenant's to decoy them. Mine got cracked; salt water got into it while we were getting down here. It crapped out after I sent our last transmission."

"You're being hunted?"

"Long story. You didn't see them?"

"Warship up the coast."

"That's them."

She looks around. There's salt crusting the walls of the cave all the way up and the water's still rising. The cave will fill completely. There must be some place for the air to escape, or else pressure would just keep the water from filling the chamber. Nothing large enough to escape through, obviously. Or—probably—to breathe through.

"Teal'c's holding the other end of the rope. You can use it as a guide. Are you okay to swim?"

Heffron smiles grimly. "If the alternative is staying here."

"Okay. It's a long swim, but doable. One at a time. Nice and easy."

"After you, Lieutenant," Heffron says.

Kemp drops his pack and his weapons. "Aw, sir, you just want the chance to talk about me behind my back."

"Yeah, Kemp, I came to Planet Bugfuck to freeze my ass off just to have the chance to do that."

"Two tugs on the line when you're clear," she says. "Then I'll send the Major out." The line's tied to her waist. She's the anchor.

Kemp wades out into the water. She feels tugging on the line around her waist for a moment as he finds it, then nothing.

"The others?" she asks. The Major sighs wearily as he takes Kemp's weapons apart. Salt water will do the rest. "I saw David—Sergeant Calloway—go down. I think he was still alive. Dr. Kiplinger was alive."

"We'll find out," she promises. If the SGC has to build its own damned pentekonter to do it.

A scarily-long time later, she feels two sharp tugs on the rope. Even in that short a time, the water has risen measurably; the ledge they're both sitting on is underwater now. "Your turn," she says.

"Did I ever mention I'm not that fond of swimming, Doctor Jackson?" Heffron says.

"Join the SGC and learn new things," she says. "Two tugs at the other end, remember."

He nods, drops his pack, his weapons belt, and his P90, and walks out into deeper water.

She takes the second set of weapons apart as she looks around, and tries to imagine spending her last minutes down here, waiting to die by drowning. She wonders why they didn't just swim out and take their chances. Well, they'll get the full story soon. She hopes Suzanne and Calloway are all right.

The water seems to be rising faster. She's sitting on what was dry (dryish) ground when she arrived, and the water's up to her waist now. If Heffron doesn't get where he's going soon, she's going to have to stand up.

She feels random tugs on the rope. Nothing that really counts as a signal, though. She checks her watch. It really hasn't been that long. (Really.) Finally the signal comes. She gets to her feet. It's harder to deep-breathe this time; she's tired from the first swim, and she's cold. But this is the last air this side of the surface. She pants like a dog for almost a minute, then dives in.

Lightless blackness, and cold. This time the rope isn't unspooling behind her, though. It's being coiled up ahead of her, tugging her gently forward. She swims to keep up, concentrating on holding her breath. The faster she's out of here, the sooner she can breathe again.

She doesn't actually remember the last few seconds of the swim. Or of being yanked to the surface like a trout on a line. But oh, air is sweet. Teal'c hauls her up the side of the cliff, no climbing required. She's going to have rope-burns, though.

At the top, she's got dry socks, and at least some of her clothes are dry. She rinses her mouth with her waterbottle to remove the lingering taste of salt, washes her face.

And now they get the full story, as far as Major Heffron knows it.

Yesterday 14 (and Dr. Kiplinger) went to the site the UAV originally targeted: ruins of Minoan derivation. They were (Heffner says) definitely ruins ("Like something you'd see in Greece," is how the Major puts it). At the outskirts of the ruins, however, they found something worth asking for an extension.

"They looked like kivas," Major Heffron says.

Cam looks blank. Dani frowns. "Pointy cylinders? Sort of like bullets?" she asks.

Heffron nods. "And Dr. Kiplinger said they were important, so we asked for an extension--"

Cam raises a hand. "Bronze age Cycladic tombs," Dani says briefly. Cam nods.

"--and we opened one up. And yeah, tomb all right. And in pretty recent use. I mean, the body wasn't _fresh,_ but it wasn't all that old. So she and Sergeant Calloway were inside, and she was filming things, when a bunch of the locals showed up."

"Had she moved anything?" Dani asks.

Heffron shakes his head. "No. At least not while I was there. Kemp and I were walking perimeter, we were cut off from the tombs when the locals showed up. I tried to talk to them, but they didn't speak English. Dr. Kiplinger came out and said something and one of them slugged her and Calloway jumped in and they clubbed him. By then Lieutenant Kemp and I had a choice between gunning down the guys that were after us, or running for it and trying to circle back and rescue Kiplinger and Calloway later. So we ran."

"It was the right choice," Cam says.

Heffron makes a disgusted face. "We couldn't lose them, though, and they'd split up—gotten between us and the Stargate. We saw some steps cut into the cliff about three kliks up the coast, and we'd seen caves. We managed to set up a decoy with the radio to divert them long enough to get down the cliff and into the cave, but every time we tried to come out, they started shooting at us. Arrows. Then the tide was coming in, and even if we got out of the cave, they'd just pick us off in the water. We figured on trying anyway it if the water got much higher."

Dani thinks back to the terrain they crossed on the way here. She's not sure she saw any beach closer than the headland, and that's where the ship is. They'd never manage a swim of that length, and it would take them right to the people who'd been trying to kill them in the first place. Their best hope was to do just what they did: wait until the last possible minute for rescue.

Cam looks at the sky—it's a bit past noon, local—then at her.

"I'd like to get a look at those tombs," she says cautiously. "Rescuing Suzanne and Sergeant Calloway is our first priority, but if this is a real Bronze Age culture, they aren't going to want to sail at night, so they'll probably stay where they are until tomorrow morning. They should have their main camp at their ship, too, unless they're planning to stay a while."

"Where are the ruins?" Cam asks. Heffron points. "Well," Cam says, "I'd say it's on the way. Let's go."

Cam and Sammy hand over their sidearms, so at least everybody has a weapon. They're all cautious, but they don't see anybody. They reach the ruins, and it's pretty easy to see why _this_ city was abandoned.

"Looks like an earthquake hit it," Sammy says.

"Funny thing," Dani answers. "An earthquake was what was supposed to have destroyed the high Minoan culture that used to dominate the Mediterranean. It was only after its destruction that Greece actually became a dominant power in the Aegean." 

But the answers she needs aren't here. They move on.

The tombs are—just as she thought—the Bronze Age "beehive" tombs. But these are obviously of modern construction. "Which one did she open?" she asks, and Heffron points.

Cautiously—oh, everyone's on edge now—she approaches it. Yes, here's the opening. But it's been bricked up again, and the clay is still wet. Beans and flour are scattered around in front of the entrance. Propitiation for hungry ghosts.

"This culture hasn't evolved in the last five thousand years. The only time we usually see that is on active _Goa'uld_ worlds."

"Noted," Cam says.

"I need to look for another recently-sealed tomb," she adds. "It won't take long. If I find it, I think I'll know why they're here."

Information that might save Suzanne and Calloway's lives.

"Make it quick," Cam says, and she nods. 

There are about a dozen tombs, laid out in a spiral pattern. She makes a quick circuit of them and finds, as she'd suspected she would, another freshly-sealed tomb. There are flowers scattered outside the doorway of this one. The same kind they found at the Stargate.

"Okay," she says. "Tombs of this style are for the burial of kings and heroes. They're site-specific—built on holy places—meaning the locals would abandon their city and move elsewhere, but still return here to bury important dead. That's why we thought PDY-132 was uninhabited. The native population's relocated far away from the Stargate. Unfortunately, you interrupted a state funeral."

"That's not good," Cam says. Heffron looks grim. _Are my people still alive?_ They all wonder that.

There's no simple way to approach the ship undetected. Teal'c does his best, leading them toward it in a wide circle.

"You going to be able to talk to them when we get there?" Cam asks her in a low voice.

"Maybe," she says. "If my reconstruction of Ancient Greek is good enough, and if they speak it. If I can hear a large enough sample of their language, I might have a chance."

"Considering everything, our best bet might be just to toss a few grenades into the ocean, grab our people, and run," Heffron says.

"Hard on the fish, though," Cam says meditatively. And as it turns out, they can't do it either her way or Heffron's.

The beach stretches out several hundred yards here; even at high tide, it isn't completely under water. The pentekonter is beached, as she expected. There are cliffs above it, but a path leads up from the beach to the top of the cliffs. There are sentries on top of the cliff; Teal'c's zat takes care of them. It's late afternoon by now. Sentries dispatched, they crawl to the edge of the cliff and look over the edge.

An ordinary scene from about five thousand years ago. There's a cooking pot on a tripod. The ship's sail has been rigged as an awning to provide shade; it's bright enough and warm enough here that Dani's clothes—and undoubtedly Heffron's and Kemp's—have dried to stiff itchy prickliness. Bronze Age warriors, in kilts and sandals, stand and sit and lie. Their dark skin is seamed with scars—there must be someone here, Dani thinks, to fight wars with. They're talking, but she's too far away to hear.

A naked man lies spread-eagled on the stony ground, his wrists tied to stakes. Blood mats his hair, crusts his face, and his body is mottled with bruises.

"Calloway?" Cam asks, and Heffron answers: "Yes."

Dani keeps looking, and finally sees Suzanne. She's huddled up against the hull of the ship, arms wrapped around her knees. Her head is down. Her long hair is disheveled.

"There's Suzanne," she says.

"How many you count?" Cam asks.

"Seventeen," Teal'c answers.

"There should be more than fifty," Dani says. She's counted the oars again, just to be sure. "They're not belowdecks on a ship like this."

"We'll worry about that later," Cam decides. "Considering everything, I don't think talking is an option, so right now we see if we can make 'em run. Sam, Dani, you get Dr. Kiplinger. Teal'c, Major Heffron, get Sergeant Calloway. Lieutenant, you're with me."

They retreat from the edge of the cliff and get to their feet. Head for the cliff path. Just before they start down it, Cam lofts a grenade into the water. Guess the fish will have to take care of themselves.

And—oh, god—the warriors are all up and moving, but they _aren't fleeing in terror._ Even when Cam tries another grenade. Then Teal'c racks and fires his staff-weapon, and _that_ gets their attention. They take off up the beach—all but one who heads for Suzanne, and Teal'c drops him with a zat-blast. Cam helps them along with another grenade, pitched to fall safely behind them, and by now the six of them are all down off the path and running.

She and Sammy reach Suzanne, and Suzanne flings herself on Dani, babbling incoherently and bursting into tears.

"Move, goddammit, move, _move!_ " Dani snarls, tearing Suzanne's hands loose and hauling her to her feet. Those men won't stay spooked long, and they've only got the one zat. She and Sammy drag and push Suzanne—who seems to want to _stop and chat_ —toward the cliff path.

Oh, god, she hears gunfire behind her. 

They get to the top of the cliff, and she kicks Suzanne's feet out from under her, slamming her flat to the ground. Suzanne squeals and starts to cry in earnest. _"Will you shut the fuck up?"_ Dani snarls. She draws her gun. Sammy is crawling back toward the edge of the cliff.

More gunfire.

"Come on!" Sammy says. "They're on their way!"

She gets to her feet, but _Suzanne isn't moving._ She grabs her by the arm and hauls. "I'm _hurt,_ " Suzanne whines, and oh god, Dani has heard that same tone in her voice a thousand times back on Earth and wanted to slap her every single time.

"You're going to be dead if you don't _move your ass,_ " she says.

She keeps a death-grip on Suzanne's arm as they run, and oh, god, where are trees when you need them? They're an hour from the ruins, and that's the nearest cover. Two hours from the Stargate, and Calloway looked badly hurt. She has no idea if he can walk at all, and if Teal'c has to carry him, that's one less person who can shoot.

But the others all catch up to them—Teal'c's carrying Calloway—and they stop long enough for Sammy to give him morphine and wrap him up in one of their plastic thermal blankets—he's ice cold, even though the day is warm. He's concussed, unconscious, and Sammy's pretty sure he's bleeding internally. He needs real medical help fast.

Medical help is more than two hours away over rough ground.

At the stop, Cam takes Suzanne aside and talks to her. She's a little calmer when he's finished. Teal'c passes Dani his staff-weapon. She hands off her quarterstaff to Major Heffron—she'd give it to Suzanne, if she didn't think Suzanne would just _leave_ it somewhere.

They aren't followed, and that's disturbing.

They'd be making better time without Suzanne. Okay, she isn't crying now. But the IOA delegates moved faster than this back at the Gamma Site. And Suzanne keeps wanting to chatter brightly to Cam, who keeps—gently, politely—hushing her up. Because voices carry, and even though they can be seen for miles, it would be nice if they weren't _heard_ for miles, too. Suzanne said she was hurt, but there's no blood on her clothes, and she isn't even badly bruised. Raped? Maybe; they'd consider her spoils of war, but she'd belong to a specific warrior—probably the highest-ranking member of the expedition—and he'd be unlikely to share her around. And she's fully-dressed now, and her uniform isn't torn, so even if she _was_ raped it can't have been too bad. Dani has more pressing worries, and so does everyone else. Where are the Cycladeans? They attacked their campsite and stole their captives. The locals should be right behind them.

They stop every fifteen minutes so Sammy can check Calloway's vital signs. From her expression, they aren't good. Teal'c's carrying him in his arms like a baby, trying not to jostle him; a travois would be better, but there's nothing here to make one with. They have her quarterstaff, but they don't dare sacrifice the staff weapon.

"Rest break," Cam says. "Ten minutes."

They share their canteens around, since Heffron and Kemp are out of water, and Suzanne has lost all of her gear. Rations, too. Powerbars, chocolate.

"This planet was supposed to be uninhabited," Suzanne says, as if it's a personal insult. Apparently she thinks she's safe now—at least safe enough to really start bitching.

"Rule number one," Dani says quietly. "No uninhabited planet ever is."

"Oh, god," Sammy says. She sounds flat. Defeated. Dani turns around. Sammy's looking at Major Heffron. "I'm sorry," she says.

Calloway's dead.

Dani shakes her head, and pulls off her pack. Takes out her own thermal blanket, and the roll of duct tape she always carries, and offers them to Sammy; she can use them to make a quick shroud and covering for the body. Heffron reaches out—a reflexive gesture—to remove Calloway's dog-tags. But someone else has already taken them.

They'll bring Calloway home.

"He's dead?" Suzanne says, sounding as if the concept never occurred to her, and Dani gets to her feet—her turn—and takes Suzanne's arm—and walks her away from the others.

"Yes," she says quietly. "He's dead." She faces Suzanne away from the body. She doesn't want any more hysterics—she's not sure whether or not Suzanne's ever seen a dead body before—and Calloway was Heffron and Kemp's teammate.

"But ... you're wrapping him up."

"We're bringing the body back with us."

Suzanne stares at her, uncomprehendingly, and Dani knows the next words out of her mouth are going to be _but why?_ And she doesn't want to hear them. "We bring home our dead, Suzanne. Whenever we can."

"I don't want to be here," Suzanne says, and her voice sounds so quiet, so normal, that it takes Dani a moment to realize what she's seeing is the other kind of hysterics. The quiet, dangerous kind. "I only asked General Landry because I knew you'd never approve. And everybody knows it looks better on your record if you've got offworld experience. But I didn't want something like this to happen. They hit him. And they kept hitting him. And they wouldn't stop. I told them to stop, but they wouldn't. I speak Greek, you know," she adds.

"Yes, Suzanne, I know. It's why we hired you." Not the only reason, of course, and right now Dani's wishing she'd never seen Suzanne Kiplinger in her entire life. Even if she _is_ an expert in Bronze Age Cycladic cultures.

"You never liked me," Suzanne says confidingly.

"No, I didn't."

"You were jealous. Because I could get a man, and you couldn't. You just pretended you were better than everyone else, because you were on SG-1."

"Yes, Suzanne, that's right," Dani says.

"And everybody knows Colonel O'Neill just put up with you because, oh, somebody in Washington told him to. And they kept talking to me, and I couldn't understand them! And they hit him, and they kept hitting him, and I tried to stop them, and they _hit_ me!" Her voice is starting to rise. Dani puts an arm around her, feeling awkward.

"Quiet, quiet. Nobody's going to hit you now. We're going to walk back to the Stargate, and then we'll all go home."

"I don't want to be here," Suzanne says again. Dani looks over her shoulder. Calloway's body is all wrapped up now, an anonymous bundle.

"Yes, I know." She leads Suzanne back over to the others and hands her off to Cam for a moment, then goes over to Sammy. "What do you have that could work as a tranquilizer?" she asks without preamble. And god, from now on she is going to figure out some way to smuggle _Scotch_ through the Stargate. "Suzanne's about to come completely apart. I mean _completely._ "

"Unfortunately, they don't issue Valium to field medics," Sammy says. She thinks for a minute. "Tylenol with Codeine? It should slow her down a little. I've got some morphine left if we've got to knock her out."

"I've got some. I'll try that. Thanks."

Sammy gives her a weary smile. Hates to lose a patient as much as a doctor would.

Dani digs out a couple of T3s and unhooks her canteen. She's got a little water left. Goes over to where Suzanne is talking earnestly with Cam. "I bet you've got a headache," she says, when Suzanne looks up. "Colonel Carter thought these would help."

Suzanne takes the pills without questioning, and they move on. Dani gives Teal'c back his staff-weapon—he's carrying the body over one shoulder now—and reclaims her staff. She'd like to get a moment to talk to Cam, but Suzanne has attached herself to him like a limpet. Apparently he's her good luck charm; she seems to be sure nothing bad can happen to her while he's around. And while Dani endorses the sentiment, it's awkward.

Late afternoon now, starting to get dark. She drops back by Sammy. "Are we overdue for a check-in?" she asks.

"We made one while you were underwater," Sammy says. "We told the SGC we were going to be rescuing the rest of Fourteen." She glances at her watch. "They'll dial in about two hours from now if they don't hear from us."

"Okay. Good." She wonders vaguely how many rescue teams Landry will send until he just writes them all off.

The SAR-From-Hell gets worse when they're in sight of the Gate. It's surrounded by what looks like the entire ship's crew. "Well ... hell," Cam says, coming to a stop.

"But I want to go home!" Suzanne says plaintively.

The locals see them—no cover—but they aren't moving. Obviously they know enough to know they're offworlders—come through whatever they call the Stargate. Intend to keep them from getting away. Dani sees archers. They aren't firing. Out of range.

"Cam," Dani says, "did you guys kill anybody down by the ship?"

"No." He looks at Major Heffron. Heffron shakes his head.

She sighs. "Okay. We've still got a chance. Teal'c and I will go try to talk to them. We'll tell them all we want to do is take our dead and our woman and _leave._ They might let us go without anybody needing to be shot." It wouldn't have worked back at the ship. There, if she'd tried to negotiate, she'd almost certainly have been taken prisoner as well. But Stargates are almost always holy ground. They're negotiating (more or less) from a position of strength.

"Or they might not," Heffron says.

"In that case, you guys come up with a Plan B really quick. But I'm betting this _is_ an active _Goa'uld_ world, and Teal'c might scare them. At least enough so they won't shoot me before I find out if we have a common language."

She doesn't want to die here. And she doesn't want anyone else to die, either. She looks at Cam. He doesn't like it—she can tell—but the alternative is gunning down fifty locals who were just minding their own business until 14 showed up. That really isn't fair. Finally he nods.

They all walk forward slowly—to just out of what she thinks is probably arrow range. Then she and Teal'c walk forward alone.

It takes her two hours. The first fifteen minutes is spent finding a common language. Prince Agyntor has come to entomb his father. He attacked the strangers profaning the tombs. She doesn't argue the point; he's right. It's getting dark. His party lights torches. She gives Prince Agyntor her knife and Teal'c's as gifts. They're steel. This culture still works in bronze. Along the way, she discovers she didn't have to worry about being shot. They beat Calloway to death in order to kill him so his blood would not be spilled by weapons. If it were, his vengeful ghost would haunt them forever. She says they will take Calloway's body away with them, and give them two more knives and a fine rope that will not rot in seawater besides. All they ask is to be allowed to go through the Gods' Door. 

Finally the Prince agrees. She walks back to the others. "Give me the rope and your knives and don't say a word. I don't know how well this deal will stick."

Cam and Sammy pass over their knives. Suzanne looks pretty loopy now. Dani wonders if Sammy shot her up with morphine. She hopes to god she did. If Suzanne has hysterics now, they may all be dead.

"The SGC is late for its check in," Cam says, just before they start back.

Yes, that fact had not escaped her.

They all walk up to the Stargate.

She hands over the rope and the knives to the Prince, then returns to the DHD. Tells the locals to stand away from the Gods' Door. She doesn't know whether they've ever seen the Stargate activated. Dials home. Sends her code.

Her GDO doesn't go green. Her IDC vanishes, replaced by a code she's only seen a few times in the last ten years: _Emergency Divert._

Fuck.

There's no time to waste in _talking,_ explaining to Cam what's going on. She shuts down the GDO, and with the cessation of the signal, the Stargate shuts down as well. She dials again, quickly. The Alpha Site. This time she gets a green light. They go through.

"I didn't want to say anything back there, but..." Cam says.

"SG-1, SG-14, glad to see you made it," Major Rackham says. He takes in the bundle that Major Heffron and Lieutenant Kemp are carrying between them, and looks suddenly grave. "I'll call for a stretcher."

They call for medical teams even for the dead.

"Misdial?" Cam asks her.

"I got the Emergency Divert code, and I didn't exactly want to stand around and chat," she says.

"The SGC's under Wildfire," Major Rackham says. "All Teams are being rerouted here until it's cleared up." Or until the SGC's blown up, because the last step in Wildfire is the triggering of the Base self-destruct.

"But I want to go home!" Suzanne says. "I don't want to be here! I don't even know where I am!" Suddenly she lunges at Dani, taking her by surprise. _"You said I could go home!"_

Cam and Sammy grab her, but not before she's knocked Dani's glasses flying. Major Heffron picks them up. Dani staggers back against Teal'c. He puts a steadying arm around her. "I want to go home, too," Dani says to nobody.

Suzanne is crying quietly now. The Medical Team arrives, and loads Calloway's shrouded body onto a stretcher. Cam and Sammy lead Suzanne after them.

"She probably won't say it, so I will," Major Heffron says, handing Dani her glasses. "Thanks."

Lieutenant Kemp nods.

"I'm sorry about Calloway," she answers. Her department. Her fault. 

Nobody says anything. There's nothing to say. The four of them walk out of the Gate Room together.

#

She usually doesn't mind the Alpha Site. Sitting around it wondering if the SGC is going to still be there when they get back (if they get back) sucks, though. So they're all edgy, and there's no news from Earth for 36 hours. Suzanne spends the night at the Alpha Site under sedation in their Infirmary, but she's cleared to come back when they get the all-clear Sunday afternoon. (Turns out it was some kind of alien plague. It happens.)

Because of the mop-up after Wildfire, all their debriefings are delayed, so it's just a matter of checking out through the Infirmary—a formality, since it's already been done at the Alpha Site—then they can go home. Suzanne has been doing a good job of pretending Dani's invisible, and Dani's been letting her. So far. 

She's composing a memo in her head.

#

Mutiny is an ugly word.

Sunday night. Cam's sitting on his couch, beer in hand, not paying a lot of attention to the television. Thinking about setting his career—his _life_ —on fire and watching the blaze. Thinking about mutiny.

It's punished ruthlessly—court-martial, firing squad—and for a damned good reason. It's a rot that strikes at the essence of the military machine. Although it isn't really a machine—Cam's known that since before he could walk, really—it's _people._ People who make themselves into something both more and less than civilians because of an ideal.

And those people follow orders that come down through the chain of command, and they follow them (more or less) without question, because that's the way the military works. At its heart, it's based on trust. You trust those above you to give correct and ethical orders. You trust those below you to carry them out to the best of their ability. Without trust, the whole thing just falls apart. The idea of mutiny destroys the idea of trust, because it puts on the table the one thing that must never be there: the idea that your superior officers are so dangerously incompetent you not only need to ignore them, you need to defy them.

He's kicked around in a lot of commands. He's had brilliant officers, okay officers, officers he's just put up with in places where the only thing worth doing was keeping your mouth shut and your head down. He's heard all the stories his Daddy told when Cam was old enough to properly understand them, and the ones his uncles told, too: there've been Mitchells in just about every branch of the Service going back to the Revolution. They fought on both sides in that, and in the War of Northern Aggression, too. Bred in the bone, Momma used to say, because her daddy was a Griffith and she came from a long line of military men and women as well. Best to know what you were in for before you started, she'd always said. The lives of military wives weren't always the easiest, Lord knew. He'd seen that first hand, growing up. It'd helped, some, along the way.

So as a result, Cam knows just about every way there is to throw a monkey-wrench into a command and not get caught. They call it "white mutiny" for a reason. Nobody gets shot, nobody goes around yelling any threats. Nobody's told to walk the plank. Things just ... sort of don't happen, and the people at the top of the chain of command never quite figure out why. Or if they do, there's nothing they can prove.

He never thought he'd be involved in one. Never thought of it for a moment, even in the worst of his billets. He's always loved what he does. Nobody pushed him into joining the Air Force. He'd _wanted_ to go, and it wasn't like he didn't know the potential cost. He'd learned that at an early age, walking into that hospital room and seeing his Daddy without any legs. Scared him half to death. Proud to serve anyway. To join the 302 program, even prouder. To pay the ultimate price over Antarctica—he'd expected to. Survived, learned to walk again. Came back to serve again.

Mutiny is an ugly word, whether it's black, white, or bright green. But rotting a command from the inside out? There's nothing easier, especially when the command is half-rotten to begin with. The thing that weighs on Cam's conscience hardest is that it's only _half_ -rotten. They could limp along for years just as they are. And General Landry's been here going on three years now, and General Hammond was only here for seven, and it could be in a year—or two—General Landry would be transferred out and they'd get a steadier hand and everything would be fine. And it could be they don't have a year—or two—to spend on bad decisions. And not even _bad_ decisions. That's the hell of it; if they were bad decisions, the man would have been pulled out and replaced long since. They just aren't the best possible decisions in Cam's opinion, and Sweet Jesus, that's what this all comes down to. _His_ opinion. Because yeah, Sam's been royally pissed off ever since the General handed Colonel O'Neill's body over to the Asgard, and now the General's in the T-man's bad books too, and Little Miss has always dealt with General Landry by pretty much ignoring him completely (which doesn't really help matters), but Landry's always kind of _liked_ Cam. Gone out of his way to be sociable. Let him go home for Christmas last year. And what does _that_ say about the situation when two members of his team out-and-out _hate_ the man, one of them won't say, but Cam's his special pet?

Nothing good.

But he was still fence-sitting right up until 132, where they all busted their asses trying to rescue SG-14, and ended up bringing home a _dead body_ because General Landry had sent somebody through the Gate who was the last person who should ever have gone. Sure, missions go balls-up anyway. Nothing you can do about that. They've caught their share. But they've never gone balls-up because Little Miss didn't tell him something he needed to know. And it happened on 132, and it wasn't Dr. Kiplinger's fault. It was General Landry's. The woman would never have been there in the first place if he hadn't sent her there. Department Heads sign off on those requests for a _reason._

Landry went behind Dani's back. And Cam knows why. The trouble is, _she's_ not the trouble. Maybe Little Miss isn't the easiest person in the world to get on with. But if the General can't get on with her, he should fire her. Only if he does that, Cam suspects Earth is pretty well screwed. So he guesses he's going to touch the match to this powderkeg after all, and God help him.

God help them all.

#

Monday. After Calloway's memorial service, after the Department Heads Meeting. The actual funeral will be in a day or so; a family thing, they take time. Dani probably won't attend. She's sick to death of funerals.

"You can't do this!"

Dr. Suzanne Kiplinger obviously got the memo this morning. (Dani spent her Sunday evening drafting it.) The one requiring Dr. Kiplinger's (mandatory) attendance at Gate Team Orientation and Training (a six-week module that includes self-defense and firearms) until she passes (or quits Stargate Command). She's now in Dani's office, flourishing the memo as if it were an oriflamme.

Dani looks up. "You'll find I can."

"I won't do it." Suzanne doesn't stamp her foot, but it's a near thing. She obviously spent the weekend (after they got back) at wherever it is people like her go: her nails (chipped, broken) have been repaired: they're long and pearly and glistening again. Her mouth and eyes are painted. She's bejeweled (necklace, earrings, rings) and (beneath her lab coat) she wears bright silks, a narrow skirt, and (from the clicking noise she made entering Dani's office) she's back in her impractical high heels.

"It's a requirement for staying here," Dani says, in the same deadly even tone. "You killed a man on PDY-132. It isn't going to happen again."

Suzanne blinks at her in surprise, opening her mouth to protest. Dani holds up a hand. "You went to 132 thinking it was uninhabited. Fine: that's what the MALP and the UAV said. You might have missed the flowers at the Gate. They might have been placed after you came through. But when you reached the tombs, you knew immediately they were of recent construction. Did you notify your Team leader?" She stares at Suzanne until she answers.

"Well ... no. It was obvious."

"To you," Dani says. "Not to him. You withheld vital information. The site was in current use; therefore the planet was inhabited. Then you opened one of the tombs."

"Well, of course." Suzanne sounds irritated and puzzled now. "We've never found anything equivalent intact on Earth—it was an unparalleled opportunity to gain insight into a preserved cultural offshoot of the Mycenaean people--"

"You didn't tell Major Heffron you were desecrating a royal grave from a site currently in use," Dani says.

"I didn't move anything!"

"You didn't tell him the planet was inhabited. You didn't follow any of the First Contact protocols." First Contact protocols require retreat to a neutral location. Cautious attempts to communicate with the local population. Retreat at the first sign of trouble. No violence. No hostilities. They're the ideal, and mistakes happen, but as soon as Suzanne saw the burial site was contemporary, SG-14 should have been heading back toward the Stargate as fast as they could go. It might have saved them.

"But I--"

"And Sergeant Calloway died for it. Major Heffron and Lieutenant Kemp almost died. They would have, if we'd been half an hour later finding them. And if I hadn't been able to talk to Prince Agyntor—if he hadn't been a reasonable man—we'd have had to kill people to get off 132. So you're taking GTO&T until you pass. Not because you're ever going offworld again. But so you'll understand just how badly you fucked up." Dani doesn't raise her voice once. It's perfectly even. A dry recitation of facts.

Suzanne stares at her. Disbelief. Fury. "You won't get away with this," she says at last.

"You're going to try to go over my head. I wouldn't." She's stared down First Primes, Replicators, alien berserkers. It isn't surprising Suzanne flinches first. 

"Are you threatening me?" Suzanne demands, but there's fear in her voice. The beginnings of capitulation.

"I'm saying you'd rather take the course," Dani says. Yes, Landry can overrule her. And there are other—more complicated—ways to make Suzanne's life a living hell, both here and (if she quits) in the outside world. Dani would rather not have to bother with them. She will if she has to, though.

She told Prince Agyntor David Calloway's ghost would walk until it was buried in familiar ground. She doesn't believe in ghosts. But she believes in honoring the dead. _You will honor their memories!_ Cam's voice says in her mind. She'll honor David Calloway's by making Suzanne Kiplinger into someone who can never again make the mistake that killed him.

Suzanne stares at her for a long time in silence. Dani's fairly sure the conversation is over. They usually are at this point. But Suzanne surprises her. "You need to start forgiving people," she says seriously. Suzanne sounds a little hurt (still) but more the way she usually does—as if she knows all the secret rules to life and will explain them to Dani if given the slightest conversational opening.

"No," Dani says. You don't forgive people for the things they could have avoided by paying attention, by being smarter, by not making assumptions. Forgiving means forgetting, and if you forget, you only give them a chance to do those things again. No one here can afford even one mistake. She won't help them make them.

Suzanne turns and leaves without saying another word.

Dani's pretty sure she's won now. She makes a note to email Colonel Ironside and let him know Dr. Kiplinger will be joining the next GTO&T module. She wonders how many times Suzanne will have to take it before she passes.

#

The week is brutal, starting with another SAR, this one in search of SG-4: the Russian Team. They missed two check-ins, and it was only supposed to be a three-hour mission: PX5-792 is covered in ice. Minus 28 Celsius at high noon, and the temperature drops constantly throughout their search. SG-1 is spelled by SG-3 (two hour shifts) and they search until nightfall drops the temperature to minus forty-five, but they find no sign of bodies.

Their own scheduled mission is quietly weird: they go off to answer a distress call Sammy hopes might be from Tollen survivors. They find a city that looks high-tech enough, but it's deserted. _Supposedly_ deserted. Turns out it's actually full of people who have decided living out-of-phase is safer. First Teal'c vanishes, then Sammy, then Cam, and Dani's left wandering around an empty city (with no intention of calling home and saying she's lost her team, thank you very much) until the Sanamains take her too. They're related to the Tollen, but they split off from them long before the destruction of the original homeworld. They use the distress call as a means to lure in travelers to interrogate them about galactic current events. They're no more interested than the Tollen were in sharing their technology. Not really pleased to hear about the destruction of not one, but _two_ Tollen homeworlds. Dani and Sammy have to do some very fast talking to convince the Sanamains to let them go, since, well, in their opinion, their secret hiding place wouldn't be all that secret if they let the people who stumbled across it go, now, would it?

In between (all week), she just doesn't bother to go home. AA&T has had not one, but _two_ disasters: Coltraine decided to play Indiana Jones, and then Suzanne Kiplinger nearly got SG-14 killed. This has to stop. She pulls out the basic Orientation Lectures and takes them apart, making them into a new—shorter—series of twelve forty-minute lectures. They'll cover basic procedures, first contact, everything else she can think of: the Orientation Lecture and the GTO &T material, suitably reformatted and disguised. She can order her department to attend, and she'll ask Cam to figure out a way to get the Cultural Specialists who aren't attached to her department to attend, too. Giving the series will add an hour to her workday (or subtract one, since while she's giving the series, she can't be in her office doing anything else) but it has to be done.

She continues to work on the paper on Ancient. She has the sinking feeling she's going to miss _Odyssey's_ next departure date, and that means two _more_ months before she can hope for an answer. But there are only so many hours in a day. She's also scrambling to work on the basic _Goa'uld_ primer. She needs to hire someone to work on that full-time, but they'd have to learn _Goa'uld_ first, and sound-files can only do so much. She needs a bigger budget.

And there's gym-time, which she doesn't sluff off, because the quarterly review is approaching with frightening speed. But something in her schedule has to give, and it's the time to drive home and back. The only reason she leaves on Friday (the first time she's been out of the Mountain since _last_ Friday, if you don't count offworld) is because Amelia reminds her that she's hosting Freaks and Geeks tonight.

She groans. It seemed like such a good idea two weeks ago. And right now she'd give _anything_ for...

More time at her desk. Eight uninterrupted hours of sleep. Or most of all—seductive, forbidden—to be driving over to Cam's to spend the evening doing _nothing at all._ Instead, she leaves promptly at end-of-shift to go and buy mixers and napkins and paper cups.

The outside world is a strange and alien place. The sun is bright and the air is warm, and she thinks, wistfully, of spending the whole weekend doing nothing. Catching up on her reading: the book Cam brought her is still on her nightstand. But she's hoping to start her lectures next week—once they're done with their review—and she still has to talk to Cam about dragooning the military side into it. She wants to be reasonably tactful. Of course she's seen him all week (breakfast, lunch, brushes with death), but she hasn't been feeling very tactful lately. Too tired. Too conscious of the fact it's _her_ department fucking up. And Sammy's side may be glamorous in Pentagon eyes, and Cam's side may be vital, but neither one ever got anybody killed by misinterpreting a situation and giving bad advice.

No, that's the province of _her_ specialists. And for years, she's known everybody considers them dispensable. A bunch of airhead academics the Stargate Program can do without, as long as it has a few Air Force officers with slapped-on archaeology degrees to attach to their Gate Teams. People who can't reliably tell Minoan from Greek and think Egyptian begins and ends with King Tut. If the Air Force had its way, her people would all have been packed off to Area 51 a long time ago, she thinks in her bleaker moments. Not let to go through the Gate at all. Never mind that what they know and what they can tell saves lives.

Usually.

She shops quickly. The last thing in the world she feels like is a house full of people tonight, but there you are. She hasn't been home in a week: she adds a couple of boxes of cookies, ice cream, and a six-pack of beer to her cart. There's breakfast. (Okay, maybe not the beer. Maybe.) Her cellphone rings while she's waiting on the checkout line. It's probably just as well she isn't allowed to carry a gun on Earth. The way she's feeling right now, she'd probably shoot everyone ahead of her. She digs it out.

"Jackson."

"Hey. You're not at your desk." Cam. 

"Sometimes I leave work."

"I'd heard that rumor. Big party tonight."

"So they tell me."

"So ... what time's it break up?"

"Why?" she asks suspiciously.

"Oh, because I figured we're gonna put in the last movie around eleven, and if you got here before it was over, there'd still be some cake left."

"What kind of cake?" Why is she doing this to herself? Going to Cam's house for cake means spending the night on Cam's couch. Almost inevitably. Like some weird sort of celibate date.

"Double chocolate pudding cake," he says, "and you know that's Teal'c's favorite."

Oh god. Hers too. It's heavy and rich and there's cream cheese in the icing and a shot of brandy in the cake and it's made with bitter chocolate and it's absolutely _decadent._ "I'll see," she says, and Cam says, "you do that, baby," and she slips her phone back into her pocket and decides she won't go. She's a grown woman. She cannot be lured with cake.

But at half past midnight she's slipping her key into Cam's door and walking in. She wouldn't (she tells herself) if Sammy and Teal'c were gone, but Sammy's car's still here. So she goes in, and the three of them are there on the couch. Teal'c at one end, Sammy and Cam at the other. She goes over to the couch and sits down. She looks at the television. Stern men in uniforms are making speeches. She realizes she doesn't know what the theme for tonight is, or who picked the movies, and she feels a pang of loss, as if they were doing something behind her back.

Teal'c puts his arm around her. "I am most pleased that you have joined us, Danielle Jackson," he says quietly.

"Did you save me some cake?" she asks, and Teal'c inclines his head. Cam and Sammy glance over at her and smile.

Fifteen minutes later the movie is over. Dani never does figure out what it's about, except that three brash young pilots flying really improbable aircraft manage to avert a nuclear war (she grasps this essential plot point because it's repeated four times). At the end, two of the pilots kiss (one of them is a woman, of course, with long flowing non-regulation hair and wearing a stunningly improbable amount of makeup) and the third one looks pensive. Cam gets to his feet and makes a joke about Naval Aviation.

"How was the party?" Sammy asks.

"Noisy," Dani answers. It's easy enough to answer in English, since Sammy spoke to her in English, but after an AA&T party it's harder to _think_ in English. So it's much easier to wait until she's spoken to. That way she can be sure of answering back in the right language. It's embarrassing to ... not. Cat is _chat_. And a rose isn't always a rose. Sometimes she wonders if one day she'll just wake up and have forgotten English completely. It's happened to some polylinguals she knows. There are horror stories about the not-quite-aphasia of forgetting your native language. Not a problem for her, since she has none. But English is the language she uses most often. It would be awkward to have to re-learn it.

"You missed some great movies," Cam says, getting up and heading for the kitchen. "Sam said romance, and I got to pick 'em."

"And you _cheated!_ " Sammy says. But not as if she's upset.

"Hey!" Cam protests. "That had a romance!"

Sammy snorts derisively. Dani yawns. "Cake?" she says carefully.

"Coming up," Cam calls.

It's a _slab_ of cake, dark and moist, and, if there's cream cheese in the icing, there's also enough sugar to form a crackly glaze on the very top. The icing is almost as dense as fudge (she thinks of the fudge Cam made once with the sort of longing she reserves, these days, for a decent night's sleep), and by itself it would be (almost) too sweet, except for the cake beneath. She wants to savor it, but she can't. It's too good. She ends up wolfing it down as if she hasn't eaten in weeks.

"Ready for another?" Cam asks.

"I shouldn't," she says, but he's already taking her plate and heading back to the kitchen. She drains her cup of coffee and follows him in. "Refill," she says. He gestures toward the pot.

"We missed you," he says, levering another slab of cake onto her plate.

"Hard to have a party at my house if I'm not there," she points out. It's a pretty good excuse, but still ... an excuse. She pours coffee. No Team Night last week, because they were all at the Alpha Site. The week before she was at Freaks and Geeks, and this week too. So it's been ... four weeks since the last one. When she slept in Cam's bed. And oh, isn't _that_ a lovely thing to be thinking about just now? Because she's wanted a lot of things in her life, and she hasn't gotten most of them, but just at the moment she can't think of anything else she's wanted that's been so possible and so disastrous.

"There's always next week," Cam says. Cam is eternally optimistic. Cam is demented. Isn't that about the first thing she discovered about him? So she takes her cake and her coffee and goes back to the living room. At least the sugar-and-caffeine buzz is giving her something like new energy. She might actually even make it out of here and home tonight, because that would be the sensible and intelligent thing to do.

Sammy's surfing local channels now, deciding she doesn't like any of them. Talking about her week's leave in September (it's already been approved) when she'll go out to California to get Cassie settled in at UCLA. "You should come along," she tells Dani. "You went there, right? Wouldn't you like to see it again?"

"I _know_ you get vacation time," Cam says. "And I bet you haven't taken a vacation in years. Maybe you should."

She bites back the first words that come to mind. _And maybe I should learn to fly, too._ "My department's really a mess," she says carefully. "I'm not really sure I can afford to be away for a week."

"You're still thinking about Dr. Kiplinger," Sammy says.

"And Captain Coltraine," she says. "Yes. I don't think we can really afford any more, um, problems on my side. I've put together a series of presentations I think will cover most of the points. At the rate of one a week, I should be through them in about three months." She sighs. "Most of it's recycled material. I've presented it before. But people don't seem to have been listening."

Sammy looks sympathetic. "Those weren't your fault, Dani."

"If they weren't mine, whose were they?" she asks wearily. "Suzanne is part of my department. Coltraine isn't, but I did his orientation. Somebody has to take responsibility."

"Yeah," Cam says, sounding as if he's talking about something else entirely. "They do. You want me to talk to the guys on the Gate Teams about this? I know a lot of 'em are in your department--"

"--but about half of them aren't," she finishes. Nods. "Yes. I need to clear it with the General, and get a room assigned, but I was thinking 1800 on Wednesdays would be good. I don't want to preach at anybody, Cam. But we've got to get this right."

"Hey," he says. "Maybe I'll come along and listen. Might learn something."

She smiles at him. "It can't hurt. You'll probably be, um, kind of bored though."

He smiles back. "Nah. I figure there'll be pictures."

A few minutes later Sammy gets up to go, to drive Teal'c back to the Mountain. Dani gets up too, saying she'll drop Teal'c off; she's closer.

Cam looks both surprised and disappointed. She can't meet his eyes. She says something about the house still being a mess from the party, wanting to get home and clean it up. That's true; she left to come here the moment her last guest was gone. It's not the reason she's leaving now, though.

He doesn't try to stop her. What would he say?

She and Teal'c drive in silence for a while.

"Colonel Mitchell was disappointed you did not choose to remain at his apartment," Teal'c finally says.

"I know," she answers.

"Has he offended you in some way?" Teal'c asks.

"Unfortunately, no," she answers.

It's almost two by the time she gets home, and three by the time she's filled several trash bags with the wreckage of the party. She consolidates the remains of the pizzas into one carton; there's lunch, and probably dinner, too. Dr. Satterjee left his Mah-Jong set here; she'll have to remember to bring it to work with her on Monday. She wishes she was at Cam's. Maybe they'd still be sitting on his couch. Maybe she'd be asleep on it. She usually sleeps well there. Not enough reason to stay. She's not sure which of them she's protecting.

She goes into her bedroom, turns on her white noise machine. The afghan is spread out across her bed in all its lurid glory. A symbol of family. Of belonging. She washes up, takes off her clothes, and gets into bed. 

That night she dreams she's on Abydos. 

In the dream, she's making _shalo'qui._ Something she never would have done: she was too old to marry; she would have been Skaara's concubine, not his wife. But it isn't Skaara who stands beside her, garbed in marriage robes. It's Cam. He lifts the veil back from her face, and she turns to face Kasuf.

But it isn't Kasuf.

She thrashes awake, panting, and her eyes are wet with tears. She scrubs at her face roughly. Angry, unsettled.

Terrified.

The dead—people, worlds—should stay dead. Not invade her dreams. She looks at the clock. It's a quarter of five, and the only thing she knows is she _cannot stay here._ She's up, dressed, out of the house and driving before she even knows where she's going. There's only one possible destination, though.

It's almost five-thirty by the time she arrives. She pulls into the parking lot next to his car. The drive has given her a chance to calm down, to realize she's acting like an idiot. Five-thirty on a Saturday morning? Why in god's name would she think he'd be awake? She can't just go barging in on the man in the middle of the night, on one of their few days off, because she had a _bad dream._ It's not only rude, it's stupid. It's career suicide. He'd report it. He'd have to.

She'll go home. Soon. Stop at a diner for breakfast. Be normal. But she sits in the Jeep, she's not sure how long, less than an hour, probably, until she sees the lights come on in his kitchen. And then she gets out, and goes up the steps to his door, and knocks. There's no answer, and she's turning away to go when the door opens. Cam, disheveled, in a bathrobe, looking so astonished to see her that—under other circumstances—it would be funny.

"Dani?" he asks. "Baby?"

"I was just--" she says, but she doesn't get to finish her sentence, because Cam is opening the door wider, and putting an arm around her shoulders, and urging her inside.

"What happened?" he asks, because obviously something did, to deposit her on his doorstep at this hour when she'd been so determined to leave not so many hours before. And how is she supposed to explain _nothing_ happened, all that happened is she had a nightmare, just a bad dream, everyone has them...

She opens her mouth and no words come out, but the sudden fear he'll think she's done something even more stupid than running from the phantasms of her own mind like a frightened child—that she's gone back to the bars, gotten in trouble—makes her eloquent. Relatively. "Slept," she says. "Badly."

"Yeah, okay, come on, sit down," he says, and he's guiding her over to the couch and she's sitting down in the corner—his spot—and he's telling her to stay right there. She pulls the afghan down from the back of the couch and wraps herself up in it. Cam comes back with a cup. "Shot of bourbon in this," he says. "Know you drink Scotch, but you can't put Scotch in coffee." He sets the cup in her hands.

"I didn't wake you up," she says. It's a statement; she knows she didn't; she saw the light.

"No, no. Getting up to go for a run. How long were you out there?"

He knows she was. He turns on the light; she knocks. Cause and effect. "I don't know. Not too long. I didn't want to wake you up."

"Baby, you can always wake me up," Cam says firmly. She knows he means it, but if she woke him up every time she had a nightmare, neither of them would ever get any sleep again. "Bad?"

She doesn't usually remember her dreams once she wakes up, but this one is etched into her consciousness as if it were something she'd studied to memorize. A lying impossible hideous image. "I didn't want to stay there," she says in a low voice. And oh, why not just admit now that she's cracking up? Their review is next week. She'll never get through it.

"Drink your coffee," Cam says.

And she does, and it's sweet and hot and the bourbon burns. She doesn't like bourbon—too sweet for her—but the taste is masked by the coffee and the sugar. She gulps it down as if it were medicine, and she's finally starting to relax, because while she's had nightmares here, too—and bad ones—she thinks she's escaped _this_ one finally. And that's all she asks. Cam puts an arm around her, drawing her closer. He adjusts the afghan. "You were going to run," she says.

"Can do that tomorrow," he says. He picks up the remote—reaching across her to do it; it's tucked down between the cushion and the arm of the sofa, and turns on the television, turning the volume down so low she can barely hear it. "'Sides," he adds. "Cartoons're on." He seems engrossed. She rests her head on his shoulder. Back here after all; she might as well have stayed in the first place.

When she wakes up, she's lying on the couch. Alone. She checks her watch. Noon.

Okay. Not the stupidest thing she's ever done in Cam Mitchell's presence, but it may make the Top Ten. But at least she got almost six hours of uninterrupted dreamless sleep. She's willing to do a lot for that, these days. She sits up, scrubs at her face, finds her glasses. Finds her go-bag (with a side-bar of taking a moment to be impressed at how he got her keys without waking her. On the other hand, she's not completely sure she locked the Jeep). Goes off to the bathroom to wash up.

Cam isn't in the apartment, but when she checks, his car is there. A note by the coffeemaker says he's doing laundry, and an appetizer is in the oven. She opens the oven. Warm cinnamon rolls. She's just finished one—and a cup of coffee—when Cam comes in with a laundry basket.

"You should do it over at my place," she says. "It would save you a lot on quarters." For a moment she can't imagine who said that. But—obviously—her. She didn't just invite Cam to _do his laundry_ at her place? Well, yes she did. He cooks, and she can't cook, so there has to be some way she can even things up.

He cocks his head, the way he does when he's thinking things over. And smiles. "Bet I wouldn't lose so many socks."

"No promises," she says.

And he laughs, and asks if she'd like breakfast or lunch, and she says she just had breakfast, and he says that didn't count as breakfast in the least, but they might as well move on to lunch anyway. And he makes grilled bacon-tomato-and-cheese sandwiches, with the leftover-from-last-night red potato salad (since, he says, it's too hot to make French Fries unless he turns on the a/c, which would be a shame to do on a nice day like this), and she says she only wonders he didn't find a way to include gravy in the menu, and he says if she _wants_ gravy it'll only take a minute. And the reason she's here, the thing that drove her here, is small and harmless now. Something she can forget.

But when they're loading the dishwasher after lunch he turns serious. "Baby, there's working too hard—and we all do that—and there's working _too damned hard_. And that's what you're doing." She opens her mouth to protest, but he isn't finished. "Now, I know, I know, you've got some fires to put out. Better now than later. Ounce of prevention to a pound of cure, Momma always used to say. And I'm sure looking forward to those talks. You gonna take questions afterward?"

"Maybe not yours."

"We'll see," he says. And the subject is dropped—over—and she hasn't had a chance to _argue_ with him. Pretty much par for the course.

She knows he's right. She could work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and never get ahead of the department's workload. Or the special projects she's added on top of it. And SG-1's missions come first, and she can't afford to be at anything less than her best for those. And the more tired she is, the worse and more frequent the nightmares get: wasn't last night a textbook illustration of that?

So she spends the weekend loafing. There's no other word for it. They round up Teal'c and Sammy, and Saturday afternoon is spent over at the house, where Cam makes good his promise-or-threat to teach Teal'c the fine art of touch football. That doesn't last very long, but there's still a basketball hoop attached to the garage, and Cam brought a basketball too: the three of them play basketball (Dani refuses to participate) until they're all exhausted.

Cam makes the usual (ritual) complaint about the state of her kitchen (both contents and cooking equipment), which doesn't keep him from demolishing cold pizza along with the others. It's just enough to tide them all over until the fresh pizzas arrive—at least when Teal'c's there, Dani doesn't get any arguments about ordering anchovies. After pizza, there's Frisbee (Cam has apparently brought _every single item of sports equipment he owns_ with him). It's starting to get dark by then, but that doesn't matter, as Cam's Frisbees glow in the dark. She's forced—more or less—to participate this time, but she doesn't mind very much. It's her and Teal'c against Sammy and Cam, so their side wins. And Cam and Sammy are covered with grass-stains.

After that, there's ice cream and cookies. It's not up to the standards of Cam's cooking (since, well, it isn't cooking) but nobody minds. Being together is more important. She's lost one family. But she still has one left. When the gathering breaks up, Cam says he's found a Farmers' Market he wants to check out tomorrow (still on his eternal quest for the elusive Perfect Tomato) and suggests Dani might like to go with him.

_And what, in the entire term of our relationship, ever gave you the notion I had any interest in Farmers' Markets on this planet?_ But she says "yes." And that night she sleeps without dreams.

In the morning Cam comes to pick her up—he'd warned her in advance they needed to get there early—and they wander among the stalls of an open-air market until noon. More things than fruits and vegetables are sold here; it interests her to compare it with the ones she's seen offworld. Not really so very different, except she has a little more cultural background for these items, and could purchase them (if she liked) and take them home without having to clear it with Stargate Command. Cam buys fruits and vegetables and jars of salsa and bags of homemade tortillas, and they eat lunch at an open-air taco stand before heading back to his place. After he's put everything away, he demands a rematch at the video game they played once before, so they play for a while, then he gets out something else he says is different. It has a plot, and a story, and it's based on Japanese mythology. He says it can take a very long time to play all the way through, as much as a hundred hours. Apparently you don't have to do it all at once, though.

It was written and created in Japan. Cam has the English-language version. He says while the game itself is nothing special, the translation is very good. She wonders if it is. Translating from the Oriental languages is difficult. He talks about localization, which surprises her: he just grins and says if you hang out with gamer geeks on the boards you're going to hear a lot about the fine points of dragging something into another language. She says localization is the most difficult part of any translation; it's why Jaffa jokes don't translate at all well, though (she assures him) they're actually quite funny in the original. He asks her to tell him one.

She says, " _Goa'uld_ mercy is dry water in an empty cup," and shrugs at his blank look. "I told you it was funnier in the original."

"Yeah," Cam says. "I guess you had to be there."

The game is interesting, though. Like virtual reality without any of the drawbacks. She mentions that to Cam and he looks a little startled, but she's been trapped in virtual realities twice (once in on the Gamekeeper's world, once when they were trying to rescue Teal'c from Area 51's adaptation of the Gamekeeper's technology). If she's going to play "Let's Pretend," she prefers to do it in a way with clear exits.

After that comes dinner. He experiments: soft tacos. She actually ventures upon a joke of her own, suggesting next time he try being really authentic, and use iguana. He thinks she's kidding, but she isn't (joking, but not kidding). Iguanas are raised for meat in Central America. She's eaten iguana more than once.

After dinner he drives her home. They stop for ice cream on the way. Not precisely on the way, but neither of them is in any hurry. It's nice, for a change. Almost forty-eight hours, and she hasn't touched a single work-related document. She makes up for it that night (only a little) by taking Cam's last present to bed with her, and reading until she falls asleep.

#

Three days of the following week (Tuesday through Thursday) are spent over at the Academy Hospital. Four times a year they're pulled off the line and gone over with a fine-toothed comb: body, mind, and (if the doctors could only figure out how) soul. The physical tests are merely exhausting, irritating, and (sometimes) painful. But there's also a psychological evaluation, designed to determine whether they've gone crazy yet. Or might go crazy soon. She's pretty sure (and has been for years) the only real proof of insanity would be in answering the questions honestly, because only someone who was _out of their_ mind would do that. But there's a long multiple-choice questionnaire, and an essay questionnaire (please answer all questions honestly and to the best of your ability), and an interview with Dr. MacKenzie. She's always wondered what Teal'c's sessions with Dr. MacKenzie are like. Because the man asks idiotic _obvious_ questions. Are you finding your job unusually stressful? Do you feel you have good relationships with your coworkers? Are you having any difficulty sleeping? (That one would have gone over well with Teal'c back in the days when he carried a symbiote.) It makes her wonder if MacKenzie actually knows what they _do_ at the SGC. Of course he does; he's been there. His questions don't reflect it, though. Maybe the reason he asks them is to see if somebody will just start screaming. Or maybe he's just that oblivious.

The real stress of the quarterlies is not knowing whether you've passed or not. The only way you can be sure is by the fact you aren't taken off the line. And everyone knows how easy it is to cheat, really. If they _did_ actually catch anything, well, there wouldn't be so many firearms-related accidents among members of the Gate Teams, now, would there? Cam says to think of it as a paid vacation, but MacKenzie isn't gunning for Cam. She lies her way through the entire psychological component of the tests: she knows what the statistical norm is, and those are the answers she gives. She says her job isn't stressful, it's challenging. 

And she says she has no trouble sleeping at all.

#

And then it's Friday. August, now. The hottest month. She should relish it, though: eight weeks from now (if that) she'll be building fires in her _(the)_ fireplace. Soon after that, they'll start to see the first tentative snow flurries. She wonders what planet they'll be on when Thanksgiving comes. She doesn't even bother to pretend she'll be sleeping anywhere but on Cam's couch. She comes in with her backpack and her go-bag, and it's hard to say which of the two of them is crazier: him for wanting her here on these terms, or her for being here. She won the first draw and picked Comedy (all movies are pretty much equally annoying); Teal'c won the second. Teal'c's tastes in comedy are amazingly low. Or maybe not: low comedy is pretty universal. It hasn't changed much from the time of the Ancient Greeks. Probably even earlier, if any material had survived.

Cam provides a cold menu—all different kinds of salad—and cold chicken. Sammy says they should move Team Night to her house next Friday, and barbecue. Cam teases her, saying she just wants to see him catch himself on fire again. Dani supposes it's an old story from the time before she knew them both. She's sure they'd tell it if she asked, but she doesn't. 

Cam and Teal'c enjoy the movies (a lot). Sammy groans her way through them. Dani entertains herself seeing which parts of them can be translated into the Jaffa dialect and still make sense. A surprising amount. And after dessert (blackberry pie) and coffee, Sammy and Teal'c leave, and she doesn't. Cam gets out the Scotch and the bourbon. Scotch for her, bourbon for him. "So," he says. "Tomorrow I come over and do laundry?"

She'd almost—sort of—forgotten about that. Almost.

"That's right," she says. "I've got soap," she adds. Containing, as Sammy once said, no ingredients whatsoever, but it would be unbearably stupid of her to wash her clothes in something that gave her headaches. Whatever the Base Laundry uses is (for some reason) all right (either that, or their rinse cycle is ferociously good), but she'd rather not take chances at home.

Cam nods. "Quiet week," he says.

Since they had exactly no missions, yes. But she hates evaluations. "Assuming we're safe for another three months," she says.

"Pretty sure we passed," he says. (She envies him his confidence.) "Things quiet at work?" he asks.

She looks at him, puzzled. "You work where I do," she points out. "And I was only there Monday and today." They had to spend their nights at the hospital during the testing. Annoying.

He sips his drink. "Just wanted to be sure that, oh, Dr. Kiplinger hadn't tried to take you out, or anything."

The image makes her snicker rudely. "She's going to be much too busy trying to pass GTO&T to do anything else." The confirmation memo from Colonel Ironside was in her in-box this morning.

"Good. That's good, then." There's something he isn't telling her. It puzzles her a little, but it doesn't really worry her. Cam will tell her anything she actually needs to know.

Many of the other things, she'd rather not hear.

#

They call it "white mutiny" for a reason. There's nothing anybody can really point to. Just a ... shift in the weather. Which is shifting. Now. With an ease that scares him, because it tells him too damned much. About leadership vacuums, and the fact the whole damned SGC was nothing but a tinderbox waiting for a match.

Which one Colonel Cameron Mitchell has been happy to provide.

There are (all shifts, including all support personnel) twelve hundred and fifty-eight people in the SGC, and after a year here, Cam knows pretty much all of them, at least to say "hello" to. As military bases go, that's _tiny._ It's been three weeks since he made up his mind to this. Gate Teams, physicists, archaeologists, corpsmen, SFs, janitors, they're all on board. Some of them don't know why they're involved. Some of them think it's about Calloway. A few of them are in it for Dani, and sure, that's what made up Cam's mind, but really, she's sort of the miner's canary here. One of Cam's great-great-grandfathers worked the mines; Cam's heard stories. The canary was the bird the coal miners took down into the shafts with them in the old days, because it was sensitive to toxic gasses. If it keeled over, they knew they'd better get out of there _fast._ Cam knows Dani isn't widely-loved (except, maybe, by the people whose lives she's saved at the risk of her own) but she's important. If Landry's playing head-games with her, that means nobody's safe. If Landry's playing head-games with _anybody,_ it's a bad thing. It means, maybe, he isn't taking his command as seriously as maybe he should. You can't run a front-line operation in a war-zone as if it were just another home front Air Force Base.

But he is. That's the problem. Bottom line.

And _none_ of them needs any more stress than what their jobs give them. He thinks about last Saturday morning, opening up his front door and seeing Little Miss standing there looking like she'd just been chased up out of Hell. He doesn't even like to think about how bad it must have been to make her come to him, because she is stubborn and stiff-necked and would rather snap right in two before she gives even half an inch. At least anywhere on Earth. Offworld, she will do whatever it takes to get the job done. But they're all different people once they step through the Gate.

Last Friday, she didn't even try to pretend she was going to be sleeping anywhere else. He thinks she'd sleep on his couch every night if her pride wouldn't choke her. He'd offer it up to her if it wasn't the surest way to be sure he never saw her here again. So he doesn't say anything. At least that way he can be sure she gets one good night of sleep a week. And he'll bend his mind to figuring out how to get her more. He's not really sure what she's running from, but she's putting a lot of energy into it.

From him, he knows that. Hurts to watch it, and not for himself. It hurts because he sees her never quite making up her mind about, well, _something._ And she's a good person. She's been trying to protect him since the day he showed up at Stargate Command, and if her ideas of protection wouldn't quite square with average folks', well, that's just her. She's been doing her best. But the things she wants to protect him from, nobody can protect anybody else from. They're just the job. She wants to, though. It's one of the reasons he loves her. She doesn't have to care about him that way, and she does.

Any one of them would die for the other three in a heartbeat, and that brings Cam's mind right back around full circle. Because the job of a CO—the real job, the ugly part of it, the part that makes good men crack—is to ask the people under him to die. And a Base Commander at a rear-echelon base doesn't have to do that, but the commander of a front-line unit does. So when he asks you to die, you'd damned well better believe he isn't throwing your life away. Like Landry threw Calloway's away.

And unlike any other front-line operation Cam has ever served with, at the SGC, everyone, at any minute, could be killed. Janitors and kitchen help included, because the SGC sits on top of a nuclear warhead big enough to vaporize the entire mountain, and General Landry can push the button. _Has_ to push the button, under any number of circumstances. Everyone is on the front lines every day. Any day they come to work could be their last. (And Anubis is out there. Somewhere.)

It takes a special commander to run an outfit like that. And there's always a learning curve, but it's been going on two years and some now, and it really ought to be over. And it isn't. And that means trouble enough somebody needs to do something.

Cam isn't easy in his mind anyway.

He spends Saturday (early afternoon) doing his laundry over at Little Miss's house. Saturday (later afternoon) making a couple of courtesy visits to SGC personnel and dependents. Making sure Sergeant Calloway's widow is doing all right: Major Heffron is taking care of her, but it never hurts to look in. He looks in on Major Heffron, too—the man came off a rough mission, lost a member of his team; Cam wants to be sure he's doing okay. Both he and Heffron know things neither one of them is _ever_ going to say aloud, but Dale is squarely on Cam's side, and the fact there _are_ sides is enough to make Cam make the call when he goes home. He doesn't call home very often. Not more than once a month. Wouldn't want to worry his folks if he missed a call, and with his schedule, he'd be sure to if he called more often. So most of the time it's letters. E-mail to Ashton (never from work, because that would ping the hell out of the servers where Ashton's stationed) and to some of the cousins, but Momma likes to get old-fashioned letters, so he writes. This, he thinks, warrants a phone call, though. He checks his watch and adjusts the time accordingly—home is two hours ahead of here. So they'll be setting down to supper in about an hour, and for a moment Cam's so homesick he can almost _taste_ it. He wants to be home, in the big old white farmhouse that went up just after the war (there's only one _the_ war in Cam's neck of the woods; the Mitchell place has stood up to everything the elements can toss at it for almost a century and a half now), teasing his little cousins, catching up on family gossip, and getting ready to sit down to a proper meal. Up in the morning and off to church, and then he'd come home and help Momma get Sunday dinner on the table, and everybody'd be there...

But there's no point in thinking about what he can't have. He sits down on the couch and makes the call.

Aunt Emma picks up the phone on the first ring—Cam knows it's the one in the kitchen, because where else would Aunt Emma be on a Saturday afternoon but helping Momma in the kitchen? And he tells her it's him, and chats for a few minutes (mostly about the weather), and asks her if Daddy's there, and she says he's in the den with Uncle Roy watching the game, and Cam flicks on the television, and finds the game Daddy's probably watching, and says he'd like to talk to him if he's got a minute, and Aunt Emma hollers down the hall to Roy, and Cam already knows to have the phone well away from his ear because Aunt Emma could deafen people in the next county if she put her mind to it.

And after a bit Daddy picks up the phone, and Cam says "it's me," and his Daddy says, "how are you, boy?" and they don't talk about anything much until they hear Aunt Emma hang up the phone in the kitchen, and then Cam sighs, and says: "Daddy, I can't give you details, but I just kinda need to talk a bit."

And he hears his daddy ask Uncle Roy to go get them both another beer, and he knows Uncle Roy will take his own sweet time coming back, because you can't be married forty years to a woman like Aunt Emma without being smart as paint. And there's a pause, and his daddy tells Cam to go ahead. And Cam talks about his Great-Uncle George, who was a Sergeant (Master Sergeant) in the Army back in World War Two (and who is the reason Cam never put a foot wrong during his entire military career: he's known since the moment he could walk you _do not piss off the sergeants_ ). Great-Uncle George saved more lives than penicillin: he was a master of white mutiny, able to reduce an entire command to complete ineffectuality in under eight weeks.

"If I had Uncle George in my squad I'd'a dropped him down a well," Cam's Uncle Al (his war was Vietnam) said once, and Great-Uncle George just laughed and took a sip of his beer and said, "If you'd had me in your squad, boy, I'd'a been a model soldier."

He can't tell his daddy what he does with his days. He can't tell him about his command, where he's serving, why what he does is so important. His family was told he cracked up his plane on NATO maneuvers in Finland, that he has a desk job in Colorado now. He's pretty sure they don't believe any of it, but that's what he has to say. He can't tell his daddy he's inciting the command he isn't a part of (because it doesn't exist) to treat their commander with something less than the respect he (officially; on paper) deserves. But not a month goes by without somebody dying, or—worse—just disappearing forever, and the only thing any of them has to hold onto is knowing their CO holds their lives more dearly than his own. So he talks about Great-Uncle George, and all the other men and women in his family who ran things the way they saw fit from wherever in the chain of command they happened to be.

And finally his daddy says, "Well, Cameron, your momma and I raised you up to know right from wrong and to stand up for what you believe in. And to take care of the people who look to you. And that's the most important thing. Because if you aren't there to take care of them, nobody else will."

"Yes, sir," Cam says. And none of this changes what he's doing or what he has to do—not one bit—but it makes him feel better about it. Because he suspects Daddy knows everything he isn't saying.

"You know your momma and I are always proud of you."

And Cam has to swallow hard before he answers. "Yes, sir. I do that."

"Well, then. You'll do what's best in your eyes. And now, I think Roy's back with my beer, and I think your momma wants to talk to you."

"Yes, sir," Cam says. He has no idea—never has—how this communication is arranged, because the den is all the way to the back of the house from the kitchen, in the "new part" (which was added on around the turn of the last century) but a minute later he hears the kitchen phone being picked up, and Momma's saying "hello" and Daddy's saying "take care now, son."

And Momma doesn't mince words at all. "Now. What's this about this girl Samantha says you're dating?"

_"Momma!"_ Cam yelps in outrage. It isn't going to do him any good though, and he vows to do something to Sam if he can just think of something bad enough. Maybe telling Little Miss about this conversation would qualify. "I am _not_ dating her!"

"Pfft. Samantha said you've set your cap for her and you're not gonna take no for an answer." Cam groans, covering the receiver with his hand. He's sure Momma hears him anyway. "Cameron?" she says.

"Yes'm, I figure we'll get to 'dating' in about another five years." _And maybe she'll let me kiss her in another ten. Because right now, I'm pretty much counting it a victory with her when she don't just spook and run out of any room I'm in._

"So. When's she coming home with you?" Momma's using her particular "not taking no for an answer" voice, and Cam is pretty sure his goose is cooked here. Because he already knows Little Miss would rather go off to a _Goa'uld_ stronghold than visit his family. And he also knows Momma wants to see the woman Sam's told her he intends to marry. He's pretty sure Sam needs strangling.

"I'm working on that, Momma. I really am. It's kinda complicated." _Like my life._

"Is this why you asked Aunt Ethel for one of Gran'ma's afghans?" Momma asks, and Cam can almost hear her eyes narrow. It's all over bar the shouting now.

And he doesn't want to answer the question. He _really_ doesn't. But it doesn't even occur to him to lie—not to his momma—which means he has to. "Well, Momma, actually, you see, it was her birthday, and I wanted to get her something really special, and she isn't easy to find presents for, you know, and, well ... yes."

"Mm." He can just see her nodding. "I'll expect her at Christmas, then."

And Cam swallows hard and offers up his soul to Jesus, who is probably the only one who can help him now, and says, "Yes'm. If I can come for Christmas, I'll bring her." It's August. That gives him just about four months to figure out how.

And Momma tells him to be a good boy, and asks him if he needs anything, and asks him if he's eating right and getting enough sleep, and Cam tells her he doesn't need anything and he's doing fine, and promises he'll call again soon and write when he can. 

One problem settled. Another one raised. Just about par for the course, he guesses.

#

"You are in _so_ much trouble," he says.

Monday morning, after the Department Heads Meeting; he's made it a habit to drop by Sam's lab to find out what went on there. He gets the other half of the story from Little Miss later in the afternoon, but right after the meeting she's running all over her floor hand-feeding her folks. There are times Cam wonders how she gets it all done, except he knows: twelve and fourteen-hour days, and working through a lot of weekends, too.

Sam gives him a look of blue-eyed innocence. "Me?"

"You," Cam says grimly. "On account of I called home this weekend, and Momma asked me when I was bringing my _girlfriend_ home to meet the family. Now—Samantha Eileen Carter—where do you suppose Momma got the notion I had a girlfriend? Because I sure as shootin' didn't tell her."

At least the woman has the grace to look guilty. But not guilty enough. Actually, she looks smug. "Well ... I might have called her a week or so ago. Just to chat."

"Uh-huh."

"A-a-and ... she might have asked me who I was seeing. Dating? She knows we work together, Cam!" Sam sounds a little frantic now, and, well, he can imagine the conversation. Because ever since he brought Sam home for the very first time all those years back, Momma has never given up hope he and Sam Carter would settle down together. By every standard of the family, it's a good match: Sam is pretty and smart and comes from a military family and fits right in with his. So Momma's always had hopes. She wants to see him settled. That's only natural.

"Uh-huh," he says.

"And, well—I _had_ to tell her the reason you and I weren't dating is because you were seeing someone else!"

He shakes his head. "You _do_ realize Momma expects me to bring her for Christmas?"

"Ooops," Sam says.

"Yeah. 'Ooops.' And if you don't want me to march right out of here and tell her you told my momma _she and I are dating,_ you're gonna figure out how to arrange that."

" _Me?_ But Cam--"

"Or I can go on and tell her what you said to Momma. And that I didn't have one blessed thing to do with it."

"Cameron Mitchell, you are a _rat._ "

"Hey, my friends like me."

"Hmph." She thinks for a moment, her eyes going distant. "Maybe we'll be offworld for Christmas," she says, sounding hopeful.

He grins at her. "No way you can count on that, Sam. So best put your thinking cap on. We've got four and a half months to come up with something."

"I'm thinking drugs," Sam says.

"I hear that," he answers.

#

Those eight Gate addresses are driving everybody crazy. Landry isn't quite fool enough just to try to Gate through to any of them without more intel, and even sending a probe would let Anubis know they have them, which would ... not be good. Meanwhile, wherever Anubis is, he isn't here. Good in one way. Bad in another, because it means when he _does_ make his push for Earth, he's probably going to be too strong to stop, even if they still had the Antarctic defenses.

The Free Jaffa? No spies in Anubis's ranks: he's too smart to use Jaffa. All of Anubis's servants are either humans, _Goa'uld_ , or Kull Warriors, which means the Jaffa can't infiltrate them directly (and if the _Tok'ra_ have spies in Anubis's armies, they aren't sharing what they know). The Jaffa _do_ have spies among some of the other _Goa'uld_ armies, though, so a little intel trickles out. They're reasonably sure (since he hasn't used it again) the _naquadriaah_ bomb they hit him with on Kelowna took out his superweapon. That hasn't stopped him, though. It hasn't even really slowed him down. Anubis controls the largest single military force in the galaxy. It's pretty much a Darth Vader scenario out there: Anubis is telling everybody to join him or die. Everybody's best guess is he's saving Earth for last. Which ... isn't really comforting.

And meanwhile SG-1's running around in a lot of circles, putting out fires.

One of their visiting fireman missions is to the planet the _Tok'ra_ dropped Harry Maybourne off on four years ago. Cam can't figure out all the details there—wasn't the guy wanted for _treason?_ —but even if they can't actually _find_ the _Tok'ra_ to talk to right now, apparently they can still get emergency messages from them. The place where they stashed ex-Colonel Maybourne, late of the NID (Cam doesn't want to ask about _why_ they stashed him there, not in front of Landry) is on a world abandoned a long time ago by the _Goa'uld_ Ares. Who has apparently decided to go back there to hide now that Anubis is making the rest of the galaxy such an uncomfortable place to be.

General Landry orders them to bring Colonel Maybourne back to face charges. He certainly can't be allowed to fall into _Goa'uld_ hands. Once they're through the Gate—in the approximately five seconds before they're jumped by the locals—he gets the whole story. It's only one sentence long.

"Jack owed Harry a favor," Little Miss says. And Sam nods, and Cam knows whatever else happens here, Maybourne isn't going back to the SGC.

Of course, everything goes downhill from there. Although to the man's credit, Maybourne does seem to be genuinely sorry to hear Colonel O'Neill is dead. Of course, at least two members of SG-1 would have shot him on the spot if he wasn't. But Maybourne's set himself up as king, based on (as far as Cam can tell) his knowledge of indoor plumbing. He _says_ it's based on his ability to read a bunch of Ancient prophecies carved into a bunch of walls nearby. He admits he's basing his translations on Dani's work, and while they're all willing to ignore the question of how he got his hands on her work, she yelps like a scalded cat and says if _she_ can't read Ancient, how can _he?_

The best part (when they get to the Ancient walls) is that while Maybourne says a particular chunk of wall says strangers from the stars will come and save them all, Dani (who is actually pretty damned good at reading Ancient by now no matter what she says) says what it _actually_ says is that strangers from the stars will come and _kill_ them all. However, she _also_ points out that even though Ancient doesn't have any particular words for past, present, and future, this is a history of this place up through _right now,_ and the only way any Ancient could have whumped this together would be by using a time machine. Which they know the Ancients experimented with (and which, incidentally, the inscriptions also mention this Ancient guy was using. Maybourne looks pretty cross about that, so Cam guesses he couldn't read that part). 

And a time machine is the _absolute last thing_ they want to hand over to the _Goa'uld_ , so Cam goes back with King Harry (or, as he likes to be called these days, King Arkon The First, which Cam's pretty sure he read in a comic book somewhere) to start the packing for the evacuation (Little Miss figures they can park them all in the Land of Light at least for a few weeks until they figure out where to stash them permanently) and Sam and Teal'c go off looking for the time machine, and Little Miss sticks around to try to document as much of the carvings as she can, because it's a sure bet she isn't going to get the chance after Ares shows up.

And, oh, all of that would work out _just fine,_ except for the fact apparently Ares didn't read up on his Ancient prophecies (or maybe read them a little too well) and shows up _early._ Whereupon they've got one hell of an unequal fight on their hands, because even though Sam has _found_ the Ancient time-machine (it's in a ship), not one of the four of them has the Ancient gene that will let them _fly_ it. 

So okay. Captured, taken on-board Ares' _ha'tak_ , torture, and Ares's got the timeship on-board (not good). However, if none of them can fly it, at least Sam can rig it to blow up. So they escape, and she does, and they fight their way down to the hangar deck—with Sam making a crack about _déjà vu_ and Little Miss saying she's usually dead by this point, and Cam loves them all more than he's ever loved anybody in his _life_ —and they get off the _ha'tak_ in a couple of Death Gliders just before it blows up.

And the one bright spot in all of this is that all the villagers are safe, and the Jaffa garrison Ares left behind don't put up much of a fight after they see that fireball in the sky. The whole god thing? Doesn't leave your followers much of a leg to stand on after you get yourself killed by a bunch of plain folks from Earth. So while Teal'c trots them off to one of the Free Jaffa recruitment camps, Cam sits down and has a quiet heart-to-heart with Maybourne. About how it would be a _real_ good idea if he was never seen again, because there are folks back on Earth who just aren't willing to let bygones be bygones. And Maybourne says he'd of thought Cam was one of them, and Cam smiles and says you just can't judge a book by its cover. And Teal'c gets back and they go home (Little Miss still has her GDO; she gives him a look when she pulls it out and asks him why the hell he thinks she carries hers strapped to her leg in the first place) and they lie their heads off in the debriefing: no sign of Colonel Maybourne; Ares showed up unexpectedly while they were attempting to convince the local population to evacuate to a place of greater safety; they were captured (have to explain the loss of their gear _somehow_ ) but managed to escape and trigger the self-destruct on Ares's ship. And here they are. 

If the home folks don't believe it, they can't disprove it, so it's all good.

Their next mission is a re-visit to Kelowna.

#

It's a few days after their memorable visit to "King Arkon's" planet when Dani's called to the Gate Room right at the beginning of the morning. Kelowna has contacted them, and it's urgent. She gets there at a dead run, just in time to see Jonas coming through. A few minutes later they, he, and General Landry are sitting around the Conference Table, getting the bad news. The former Ambassador Dreylock is First Minister now—Velis didn't last too long after Anubis's attack; whether he was responsible or not, he was _held_ responsible. Most of the surviving Andarii and the Tiranians have already been relocated to Kelowna at this point, which is unfortunate, as Kelowna is about to explode.

 _Naquadriaah_ is (Jonas tells them) an artificial element. The Kelownans have been studying it for years. They didn't want to share that information with Earth—even after SG-1 saved their collective asses—but they're willing to now, because they're all about to die. _Naquadriaah_ is created by doing something to _naquaadah_ (this part of the explanation makes more sense to Sammy than it does to her; Jonas has brought all the information with him this time) after which it turns into _naquadriaah_. Which is unstable (they already knew this). The more _naquadriaah_ you have in one place, the likelier it is to explode.

At the moment, several hundred thousand tons of _naquaadah_ are turning (rapidly) into _naquadriaah_ under the surface of Kelowna. Sammy runs the data Jonas has brought with him, and comes up with the same answer the Kelownan scientists did: the explosion (which is only a matter of time, and nobody can be sure exactly how much) is going to pretty much destroy the entire continent and render the entire planet uninhabitable because of a nuclear winter scenario. Jonas was sent to ask the SGC for help. 

They all look at Sammy. She throws up her hands (metaphorically speaking) and says yes, if she could isolate the vein of _naquaadah_ that's busily turning itself into _naquadriaah_ , maybe—possibly—it would slow down what's pretty much a chain reaction here. (When it's all over, Sammy says her best guess is Anubis's energy weapon started the wholesale conversion of a bunch of _naquaadah_ into _naquadriaah_. All they know now is that it's doing it.) But according to the geological survey maps Jonas has brought, those veins extend deep beneath the planetary crust. There's no way to get to them, much less isolate them. Jonas looks stricken, and tells them the Kelownans had been building a Deep Underground Excavation Vehicle specifically to mine _naquaadah_ and _naquadriaah_. It would have been capable of reaching the depths she describes. But it was destroyed at the time of Anubis's attack.

Dani tells him, as gently as she can, that his people's only hope now is resettlement. She doesn't tell him what she's sure he remembers from the last time they did this: that they probably can't all be saved. Even with three quarters of Kelowna's population dead, there are still a couple of million people there. She promises the SGC will do all it can to help. Jonas says he has to go home to confer with his government.

When the wormhole collapses behind him, she turns to General Landry. "I'd better go talk to the Madronans," she tells him. "Their level of development is a good match for Kelowna's; if they're willing to accept refugees, it will make things much easier."

"Oh, by all means," General Landry says, and she goes to tell Walter to dial her through to Madrona. She goes alone. Madrona is peaceful ( _really_ peaceful, in an actual trustworthy way).

Roham is pleased to greet her (not, precisely, to "see" her, since he's blind), and when she explains the Kelownan's situation, says Madrona will be happy to welcome as many of them as wish to come. It takes her about two and a half hours to complete her mission and return. By then, First Minister Dreylock and her advisors, Ven Uramel and Alucian Tarthis, the Tiranian and Andarii (respectively) members of the new Kelownan Cabinet, have arrived at the SGC.

When she shows up, Landry dumps the meeting in her lap. Cam is there, but Sammy isn't; she looks puzzled, and he semaphores—eyebrows only—in a way she has no trouble decoding as: _Sammy and Teal'c are with Jonas on Kelowna trying to sort things out there._

Dreylock, Uramel, and Tarthis want to argue. They say they came to the SGC for a practical solution to their problem, not to be told they'd have to leave their planet. She explains—for hours—that there is no solution other than evacuation. Their planet is going to blow up: their _naquaadah_ is turning into _naquadriaah_ and nobody here can figure out any way to stop it. When enough of the _naquaadah_ beneath the surface of Kelowna turns into _naquadriaah_ , it will explode with sufficient force to destroy most of the continent of Kelowna and plunge the rest of the planet into a darkness lasting for long enough that everyone else on the planet will freeze to death. But the SGC has contacted the Madronans, who are wonderful people. Really. With a lovely advanced peaceful culture (and boy, are the Kelownans going to come as a shock to them) and they would love to welcome the Kelownans—and the Andarii, and the Tiranians—to their planet. All the Kelownans have to do is dial up their Stargate and _go there._

But the Kelownans still want to argue. With her. With each other. First Minister Dreylock wants a merit-based evacuation—i.e., scholars and scientists will go first. The other two agree: so long as Andarii and Tiranians are represented equally, and not proportionally. Dani asks if they couldn't just start the evacuation _now_ and work out all the details along the way, because every moment they delay is another moment when they could be _getting people through their Stargate._

All three of them look at her as if she's crazy. "We need to finalize the details first," Dreylock says.

"Look," Dani says. "According to your own calculations, you only have between a couple of weeks and maybe a month and a half at the outside. After that, anybody left on Kelowna is going to be _dead._ You need to start moving _now._ "

"Yes, of course," Minister Uramel says. "As soon as we work out _who_ is to go."

Dani gets up and walks away from the table. Cam joins her. "I just had this conversation," she says in a low voice.

"Yeah," he says. "'Bout a month ago or so. Some people got really short memories."

"We could save ... some of them," she says. Not all.

"How many you figure?" Cam asks.

"A ... few hundred thousand." If the Gate works around the clock. If they have a month. If there's no panic, no rioting, not one misstep, they can save a fraction of the population of the capital city.

"Hey," Cam says, coming back to the table, "I've got an idea. Why don't you folks come along and check out Madrona? Real pretty place. Seems to me you can't make up your minds about this until you see what we're offering."

The Kelownans are a little suspicious, but Cam looks as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Since Graham's still here, Cam announces Graham will escort the delegation down to the Gate Room. And Graham does.

Dani blinks at Cam.

"Once we're gone," he says, his voice low, "you go on through to Kelowna and start getting people through that Gate to Madrona. Don't matter who. In fact, the more Council Members, the better. Let 'em all argue with each other on Madrona, 'cause I'm betting none of 'em's gonna be in any too much of a hurry to go back to Kelowna."

"Got it," she says.

"That's my girl," Cam says.

Walter doesn't even ask if the General has authorized this when she asks him to dial up Kelowna for her. And she goes through. The Stargate is still in the basement of the Defense Ministry, which gives her a bad couple of minutes until people recognize her. They let her use her radio; she gets through to Sammy (who's in the Science Ministry Building with Jonas and Teal'c) and lets her know they're going to start the evacuation now. With the Kelownan Council, if they can be rounded up quickly.

By the time she signs off, a Kelownan military commander has arrived. He introduces himself as Commander Bralin, and explains he has replaced Commander Hale as head of the Defense Ministry. He takes her aside, out of earshot of the soldiers. He tells her he knows about the situation on Kelowna, about the _naquadriaah_.

"Your only hope is immediate evacuation," she tells him. "We cannot stop the explosion. We've contacted a world willing to provide asylum for as many of your people as can reach it. But you have to start evacuating _now._ "

Bralin looks grim. "What about the Council?" he says.

"They want to talk about it," she says. "Commander, you don't have the time."

"I understand," he says.

And he actually does, which is how she becomes responsible for a military coup on Kelowna. All she knows at the time is that Bralin begins issuing orders. There's a flurry of activity. The first people through are from the Ministry itself: she's fairly sure, from their clothing, they're civilians. About half an hour after that, the Kelownan Council shows up—under guard—and are sent through at gunpoint.

Sammy, Teal'c, and Jonas arrive at about the same time.

"Commander Bralin," Jonas says, sounding surprised.

"Advisor Quinn," Commander Bralin says. "On behalf of the Kelownan people, and for the good of our combined nation, I am declaring martial law and ordering an immediate evacuation."

"You work fast," Sammy says to her. Dani shrugs.

"What can we do to help?" she asks.

Commander Bralin smiles tightly. "Anything that will assist in averting panic. And that will let us know ... how much time we have."

"Jonas says there might be equipment out at one of the testing sites that could be adapted to measure increases in _naquadriaah_ radiation," Sammy says. 

"I will provide a driver and a car for you," Commander Bralin says. "Doctor Jackson, I will need to make an announcement to the Kelownan people. I am ... not entirely certain of what to say."

"We'll work on it together," she says.

They don't tell the truth. They can't. It would do nothing but cause panic and riots. Bralin comes up with the fiction of a "readiness drill," ordering people to report to the Defense Ministry by their Citizen ID numbers. It's as good a method as any other of determining who lives and who dies. Meanwhile, he sends through enough of his army to sit on the Kelownan Council, along with his second in command. That keeps the Stargate occupied until the first of the citizens report to the Defense Ministry. 

None of this would work, except for the fact the Kelownans have lived under what is essentially a military dictatorship for _decades._ The people line up in the street outside the Ministry, waiting to be processed. They don't even wonder why people keep going in and never coming out. Soldiers patrol the line, keeping order. Kelowna is under martial law now. The entire army is called out to patrol the capital. All citizens are directed to leave their homes, wherever they are, and come to the capital _immediately._ Relocation efforts are stepped up to bring in the last of the survivors from Andarii and Tirania. In her spare moments, Dani worries about Cam. She hopes he's okay on Madrona. Better there than here.

Jonas, Sammy, and Teal'c get back with a truck full of gear. Sammy sets up a lab on the level above where the Stargate is. She has Jonas to help, so Teal'c goes outside to help with crowd control and Dani goes down to the Stargate. Six hours now since her arrival. The Event Horizon hasn't collapsed once, because matter has been in continuous transit. That means they can't hear from the SGC (probably just as well). The one good thing about the Gate being in the _basement_ is that it provides a bottleneck: people can't rush the Gate and try to get through. There's no merit system, no quota, no proportional representation. If you show up at the Gate, you go. It's as simple as that. There's a steady stream of people going through the Stargate as fast as the soldiers can move them. Men, women, children. Some of the children are clutching pet animals. Some of the adults are carrying large dogs. The soldiers want to tell them to leave them behind. Dani says no. She had a dog once. The Madronans won't mind. She doesn't want to think about all the animals that will die when Kelowna does. It shouldn't be worse than the people that will die, but somehow it is.

At six and a half hours, Cam checks in. Radio waves can travel both ways through a wormhole, so Kelowna can talk to Madrona at least. "Cam!" she says. "How are you?"

"Weather's great," he says. "I, ah, don't think the First Minister likes me much, though."

Dani laughs. "Gee, too bad. We're doing okay here. The evacuation is proceeding smoothly and, um, Kelowna's under martial law."

"Oh, yeah. We kinda figured that out, on account of Sub-Commander Gelis putting the First Minister and the rest of the Council under arrest as soon as he got here. Good times."

"That must have been fun."

"Oh, yeah," Cam says. "I'll check back in with you in another six. Say 'hi' to Sam and Teal'c for me."

"Will do."

A couple of hours later, she goes out on the streets. The mass of waiting Kelownans stretches for (literally) miles. Trucks block the side-streets. There are soup-kitchens and aid-stations set up. It's all very efficient—but then, Kelowna has been at war (explicit and implicit) for most of the past fifty years. The line inches forward slowly. They're all so quiet. But suddenly, as she watches, soldiers break up a fight between two people. From the shouted words, she gathers it was between a Kelownan and a Tiranian.

People see her uniform. She appeared on the broadcast with Commander Bralin. They ask her for information—are the aliens who attacked before returning? She tells them no, of course not. This is only a readiness drill.

She's gotten good at lying over the years.

Teal'c finds her and tells her she shouldn't be here. But where else should she be? She can do as much good here as anywhere else. Maybe more. How many people can get through the Stargate in an hour? How many hours do they have before Kelowna explodes? She and Teal'c walk the line together until it's time for her next check-in. She tells Cam everything is going smoothly. Cam tells her the Madronans are happily welcoming the Kelownans to their planet. Next check-in in six hours. There are plenty of emergency rations stored in the Ministry of Defense, and so far the water is still running. She gets something to eat and curls up in the corner of Sammy's lab for a nap. When she wakes up, she goes back to work.

On the fourth day of the evacuation, the Asgard chariot appears and beams her aboard.

One minute she was walking along the street—the crowd is still quiet, but more fights are starting to break out, and it's only a matter of time, now, until riots begin—and the next, she's standing on a familiar bridge. She turns. Blinks.

"Hello. Do I know you?" She can recognize Thor, but the rest of the Asgard really do look pretty much alike.

The Asgard blinks back. "You do not. I am Forseti. Your General Landry sent a message to the Asgard High Council requesting assistance with the Kelownans' difficulties, or, failing that, assistance with the evacuation. I regret I am unable to solve their problem."

"You mean you can't keep their planet from blowing up." In Norse myth, Forseti was the god of justice. She's never figured out whether the Asgard take these names on a whim, or whether they're the actual archetypes of the Norse gods.

Forseti blinks again. "That is correct, Dr. Jackson. Therefore, I will assist you in evacuating these people to the planet you call Madrona."

She wonders what the Asgard call it. "How many can the ship hold?"

"The _Aldsvider_ can transport ... perhaps ten thousand humans," Forseti says, after a short pause for consideration. "The journey to Madrona will be brief. Only an hour or so, as you reckon time."

Their odds have just improved. Incredibly. They still won't get everyone out of here, but they'll get a lot more of them. It's a good thing Asgard chariots make _Goa'uld_ _ha'tak_ look tiny.

"Okay. Good. I need to talk to Colonel Carter."

Forseti gestures her toward a familiar device. She steps up onto the hologram platform, and moves the stones. "Sammy? Can you hear me?" _And see me?_

"Dani? You're on an Asgard ship?"

She can hear Sammy, but she can't see her. Maybe she could if she were Asgard. "Yeah, um ... what's our schedule look like?"

"So far the background radiation is stable. Jonas's team's original calculations look good. At least two weeks. I don't want to make any promises beyond that."

"I'm on board the _Aldsvider._ Forseti has agreed to help evacuate the Kelownans. His ship can take ten thousand at a time to Madrona. Round-trip will be a couple of hours. He'll beam them directly aboard--" She looks at the Asgard, who nods gravely. "--but I need you to get Commander Bralin to make a general announcement so people don't panic when they just start ... vanishing. And see if you can get a hold of Cam to let him know we're coming."

"Where are you going to be?"

"I'm going to be ... here," she says. Somebody has to reassure the Kelownans. And somehow she already suspects Forseti isn't going to be much good at that.

"Got it," Sammy says. "Good luck."

"Right."

"Shall we begin?" Forseti says.

As soon as the Kelownans are on board—Forseti simply beamed up random chunks of the standing crowd until the cargo hold was full—Dani gets on the inter-ship communicator, explaining to them they're _perfectly safe,_ they're on board a spaceship belonging to _good aliens,_ they're going to Madrona. She has to repeat herself for most of the trip, and they're still terrified. She supposes she would be too, in their place.

When Forseti finishes beaming the last group of Kelownans down at Madrona, he beams Cam up. Apparently Sammy radioed Cam, and Cam radioed Forseti when the Kelownans started appearing.

"Hey, thanks for that," Cam says. "Commander Forseti, right?"

Forseti nods. "And you are Colonel Cameron Mitchell. I have heard much about you."

"Hope it's all good," Cam says. He turns to her. "Four days of that was just about enough. I do _not_ mess with politics." The _Aldsvider_ is already in hyperspace, heading back to Kelowna.

"Politics?" she asks.

Cam shrugs. "Oh, the First Minister wanted me to stage a counter-coup. But I pretty much figured Sub-Commander Gelis had everything under control. He's kinda planning on handing authority back over to the Council just as soon as the last of the refugees are through anyway."

"I hope they don't decide to shoot him," she says.

Cam grins at her. "Well, seeing as that's kind of illegal under Madronan law, they'd have a little trouble doing it. How's the evacuation going? You look tired."

"Too damned slowly," she says bitterly. "I just wish..." She doesn't finish the sentence.

"Yeah," Cam says. When they get back to Kelowna, he asks Forseti to beam him down. She checks with Sammy: Bralin has made the announcement about the Asgard aid to the evacuation. It seems to help a little with the next group.

She makes six round-trips (sixty thousand people saved, she thinks to herself). On her last one, Jonas beams up. She spends half the trip explaining the Asgard technology to him, and what he needs to do to keep the refugees from panicking. He's a quick study. When they return to Kelowna, she beams down, outside the Ministry. There's smoke in the air, and she hears gunfire in the distance. It's night. For the first time, the street lights are out. Searchlights cross the sky, providing the only light, giving the scene the aspect of an old war movie. Even the Ministry is dark.

All the soldiers are carrying flashlights. It takes an armed escort to get her through the waiting crowd and into the building. Sammy's in the sub-basement, trying to get the emergency generator on-line. Cam's holding a battery lantern for her. Dani takes it from him. "What happened?"

He grimaces. "Somebody took out the main power plant. They'll try to get it back up and running in the morning."

"Um... why?" _Why did somebody destroy the power plant,_ she means.

"They're scared," Cam says.

"And making it dark's going to _help?_ " she demands. Although she knows, just as well as he does, terrified people aren't logical. And if they start panicking, they're doomed. Just to begin with, the soldiers will start shooting people—if they haven't already. And the only way they're managing to get people through the Stargate is by having them move in a quick, quiet, orderly fashion.

Cam just shakes his head.

An hour later, Sammy gets the generator up and running: the emergency back-up system, like so much in life, was supposed to be in better shape than it actually was. But at least it means the Ministry of Defense has power again. And that the people coming down to the Stargate can go back to using the elevators in addition to the stairs.

Cam tells both of them to get some sleep, and they manage a few hours. In the morning, the four of them go out to the main power plant, along with a bunch of soldiers and a couple of technicians Bralin managed to dredge up from somewhere. There's nothing Sammy can do with it—it's been slagged—but she manages to patch one of the secondary power plants in through to the main grid: there will be street lights tonight, at least.

Then Dani goes to spell Jonas aboard the _Aldsvider_. She thinks of Charon, ferryman of the underworld. Only these people are being transported to life, not death. It would be nice if they were grateful, but they probably won't be. After several more hours, Cam takes over from her. Then it's Jonas's turn again

The Kelownan day is twenty-six hours long. That's one hundred thirty thousand Kelownans saved each day, plus however many get through the Stargate. By the end of the first week, there's both rioting and looting going on in the city. Normally Bralin would simply enforce a curfew, but the Stargate is operating around the clock. He can't.

She doesn't want to know what he does to keep order, but she suspects she knows. They all do. The secondary power-plant is only up for a few days before it, too, is destroyed, and Bralin says there's no point in attempting any more repairs. They do their best to give children preference in the queue. Soldiers come down the stairs carrying screaming toddlers, passing them to anyone who has arms free to take them. By now, nearly everyone passing through the Stargate is carrying a child, sometimes two. Probably not their own, but no one asks. The Kelownan colony on Madrona will be a nation of orphans.

She's already asked Forseti about the possibility of another ship. He's said that even sending this one taxes the High Council's resources to the utmost. They're facing a grave threat in their own galaxy. She doesn't ask for details. She just hopes it isn't the Replicators again. She knows the fix they put into place there wasn't permanent, but maybe it will last long enough for the Asgard to come up with a permanent solution.

She's pretty sure, too, that Cam has reported in to the SGC during one of his trips on the _Aldsvider,_ but she really doesn't want to know what was said. If Landry ordered them all home immediately, they wouldn't go. They owe Kelowna all the help they can give, even though it isn't very much.

Days pass.

On the tenth day, the earthquakes start. Sammy looks grim. Preludes to the main event, she says; the earthquakes mean the smaller pockets of _naquadriaah_ are detonating. It won't be long now, which means they don't have the optimistic six weeks which was the long end of Jonas's projections. Bralin tells them to leave now—Forseti can whisk them away at any time. Sammy says "just a little longer." None of them can really bear to abandon the Kelownans. But each trip Dani makes in the _Aldsvider_ terrifies her now, because she's afraid Kelowna won't be there when she gets back.

By the thirteenth day, the quakes are nearly constant. The people in the streets outside are panicking even when they're taken aboard the Asgard ship, they scream and struggle in the hold, and there are injuries. All she can do—all any of them can do—is beg for calm, telling the refugees they're safe now. It doesn't help. Now, when she returns from her stints aboard the ship, Forseti beams her onto the roof of the Ministry; there are soldiers and gun emplacements there, though they haven't—she thinks, she hopes—yet fired into the crowds below. But the streets outside are no longer safe. Any time she's above the sub-basements, she can hear constant gunfire from the streets outside, though the flow of refugees through the Stargate doesn't stop. It's like a scene out of some kind of post-modern hell.

On the fourteenth day, she's just been beamed up to the Asgard bridge. She's relieving Jonas; he looks exhausted; twelve-hour shifts of doing nothing but saying the same—useless—words over and over to thousands of increasingly-ragged refugees. She's opening her mouth to tell him to go and get some sleep, when there's another flash of light, and Cam, Teal'c, and Sammy are standing beside them.

"How long?" Sammy asks.

"The final reaction is already beginning," Forseti says. "I must remove the Stargate now."

If he doesn't, she realizes, the explosion will simply go _through_ it to Madrona.

"Wait!" Sammy says. She leaps for the holographic communicator. "Commander Bralin!" she says urgently. "You've got to go! Now!" Whatever she hears makes her shake her head in frustration.

"Colonel Carter, I must remove the Stargate now," Forseti repeats. He doesn't wait for her to agree. He pushes a button on the arm of his chair. There's a flash of light outside the windows of the bridge, and Dani sees the Stargate, hanging in space. It begins to spin, slowly.

"He wouldn't go," Sammy says. "He said Gelis was a good man, and would know what to do." She pounds her fist softly on the console in frustration. Cam crosses over to her and puts his arms around her, and Sammy leans her head against his shoulder.

Dani stares out the window at Kelowna. At first she sees nothing. Then, suddenly, the surface of the planet flares white. The clouds boil away from the light, forming a ring around it. She turns her head, blinking away purple and green afterimages.

"The _naquadriaah_ has reached critical mass. The explosion has taken place," Forseti says. There's no emotion in his voice. "I shall finish recording data, and then proceed with these last survivors to Madrona."

Dani turns to Jonas. "We saved as many as we could, Jonas," she says gently. More than First Minister Dreylock would have saved. 

Jonas nods, haltingly, trying to accept the unacceptable. "But. The Stargate," he says.

She knows what he's thinking. There was still time. A few seconds. A few minutes. Time for one or two more people to live. "Forseti had to transport it off Kelowna before ... the explosion," she says. "Otherwise, the blast energy would have gone through the wormhole to Madrona. Thousands would have died."

On the surface below, the light has faded. A black cloud hundreds of miles wide is rising, swirling into the Kelownan air, spreading. Nothing is visible through it.

#

They spend a few hours on Madrona, explaining matters to Gelis, Roham, and Dreylock. Dreylock's still pissed, but it's hard to argue with a done deal. So (politician to the core) she'll make the best of things. While they're there, Jonas makes a surprising request.

He wants to come back to Earth with them.

He's not a scientist precisely, but he was the ethical consultant for the _naquadriaah_ project during most of its existence. They have no idea how many Kelownan scientists made it off Kelowna. Jonas may be the last person in the universe with a really clear idea of the details of the Kelownan _naquadriaah_ research. He brought all the information about it to the SGC, but having him there to interpret it could be invaluable.

"But why, Jonas?" Sammy asks.

He smiles sadly. "No matter what the First Minister says, you didn't destroy our planet. Anubis did. Anything I can do to help you fight him, well, I want to do it."

Sammy looks at Cam. "Good enough for me," he says.

SG-1—plus one—Gates home.

#

He knows Landry isn't best pleased to have fobbed the Kelownans off on SG-1 for a little chat and having SG-1 _vanish_ for two weeks (well, yes, Cam _did_ check in once or twice, but it wasn't as if he was going to do much of what Landry told him to, and Landry had just enough sense not to tell him to do anything). He's not really pleased to see Jonas, either, even though Sam tells him what a help he's going to be on their new _naquadriaah_ project. Some people are never satisfied. But he doesn't toss Jonas back through the Stargate, either, so they're ahead on points, Cam decides.

The last two weeks have been plenty rough on all of them. Not so much the short rations on food and sleep—they're all used to that by now—but the part where they half-kill themselves to save the damned planet, and it blows up anyway. And knowing that between them and Forseti and Commander Bralin they got a whole bunch of people out of there alive doesn't make any of them feel any better about all the ones they _didn't_ save. SG-1 is supposed to specialize in the impossible.

Not this time. 

So they're all bleeding inside from this one. And that's how the three of them end up over at Dani's house together. (Couldn't get Teal'c out, though he gave it his best shot.) Forty-eight hours off the line, and all of his team exhausted and wired both, and of course there isn't one damned thing edible in Dani's house that doesn't have alcohol in it. Of course, it's been two weeks since any of them was home, so you could probably say about the same thing about his pantry at just this moment too. And Dani brings out the vodka, the bourbon, and the Scotch, moving like she's underwater, and they don't even pretend they're going to call for pizza. And Sam knocks back a couple of shots—okay, three or four—and says she's going to bed. She's pretty steady on her feet, too, all things considered. 

And Little Miss knocks back half a glass of Scotch like it was water, and starts talking, sounding plaintive and confused, and he'd better get all the sense he can out of the sound, because the words don't make a lick of sense, and after a minute or so, he realizes it's because she isn't speaking any language he's ever heard before. So he does the only thing he can do, and puts an arm around her, and says, "Baby, just don't think about it. Ain't nothing you could'a done but what you did do, and you did the best you could."

And she says something else—still not English; he wonders if she thinks she _is_ speaking English; he's never known her to get so drunk she messed up on that, and she really hasn't had that much to drink—and leans her head on his shoulder, and he leans back on the couch. And she falls asleep right there. And that works for him, except for the fact her couch isn't nearly as comfortable as his for sleeping on. So after a while he hooks a couple of throw pillows and the blanket she's got thrown over the back, and tosses the lot onto the floor and takes the two of them down there, and that's a lot better. She doesn't wake up once, not even when he eases her glasses off and sets them out of harm's way.

He's slept worse places, and in lots worse company. She settles right in next to him, head on his shoulder and arm thrown across his chest, just like she belongs to be there. And he doesn't care what she thinks when she's awake. She does.

And a couple hours later—pretty much what he was expecting—she wakes him up, starting to thrash. And he just holds on, and says, "Baby, I'm right here. Don't you worry none." And she sighs and goes right back to sleep.

And yeah, he can think of a couple of things that would improve this situation. Like a mattress. Or having his shoes off. But, like he told Momma, he figures actual dating is a ways off yet, and he's willing to call this progress.

#

He wakes up when the light first starts coming in the windows. She never woke up again; slept right through the rest of the night, and that makes him feel like he's accomplished something. He only wishes he could have known Janet Frasier, because from everything Sam's said about her she wasn't just home folks, but smart as a whip and knew when to keep her mouth shut and he thinks he'd of been able to ask her if Little Miss's nightmares are getting worse or if it's just that he didn't know her back when. He thinks "worse," and he's not sure what they're going to do about that, because reporting her isn't something he's going to do and what's causing them just isn't going to go away.

He figures it might be time to move now, though. Apples to oranges _somebody's_ going to want coffee soon, and he's pretty sure Little Miss wouldn't want to be seen where she is. So he works on getting his arm out from under her without waking her up, but it doesn't work out as well as he'd like. She sits up, blinking.

"Cam," she says, sounding vaguely puzzled. And, well, the lights are on, but there's nobody home. Sam's always described her as "Not Conscious Before Coffee," and right now Cam's never been more grateful for that.

"That's right," he says. He sits up. Hands her her glasses. She takes them, puts them on, gets up and walks off.

He's pretty sure she isn't going to remember this five minutes from now, so he goes out to the cars to get his and Sam's go-bags (he's had a key to Sam's car for the last little while). Comes back. Drops off Sam's bag in the spare bedroom; she's still asleep, and he doesn't wake her. Takes his along to the half-bath to make himself presentable.

When he comes out, the house is quiet. He looks in the kitchen, but she isn't there. Checks the bedroom. She's curled up in the middle of the bed, under the afghan. He checks to make sure she took her glasses off again (yes), then goes off to the kitchen. The milk in the fridge has gone bad, but she's got canned cow, so he makes himself coffee. It's a little after six, and it's a bright beautiful summer morning, and he tries really hard not to think about all those people a couple hundred thousand light-years from here who saw yesterday's dawn but not this one. He asked Forseti to go back to Kelowna and look for any survivors, and Forseti said he'd try, but he said all the junk in the atmosphere, and the background radiation, might make it impossible to find them. He'll try, though. Cam has to hold on to that thought. And the thought of all the people they _did_ save.

A couple of hours later Sam comes staggering out, looking rumpled. Cam's been paging through the stack of looks-kinda-like magazines on the coffee table, but there's not much even in the ones in English he understands. And Little Miss doesn't take the paper. He points Sam toward the coffee. She comes back a few minutes later with a mug and half a bag of cookies.

"Ugh," she says. "Stale." But she eats them anyway.

"That's what I like about you, Sam. Your appreciation of fine dining," he says. And steals a cookie.

"I'm _starving,"_ she complains. And yeah, they've all been pretty much missing meals regular for the last couple of weeks. And there's not a lot here.

"Well, we can go out to breakfast soon," he says. When Little Miss wakes up, he means.

"Hah," Sam says comprehensively. She finishes her coffee and goes into the kitchen and comes out with another cup and goes into the back of the house. Cam's pretty sure when it comes down to the important things in life—like breakfast—Sam knows no fear. A few minutes later, she's back. "She'll be right out," she says cheerfully.

And about a half an hour later she is, and after another cup of coffee they all pile into Cam's car and head for the Awful Waffle on West Filmore, where the lot of them eat as if they haven't seen food for weeks, which is pretty close to the truth. And they talk about everything but where they've been and what they were doing there (even obliquely) and then he drops the two of them off at her place again, and (once more) the three of them go to pick up the pieces of their interrupted lives.

#

It's the first time he sleeps with her at her house. It isn't the last. He falls into the habit (would have months ago if she'd have let him do it then; she lets him do it now: progress) of chasing her out of her office at End of Shift a few times a month. Follows her home (he says it's to keep her from doubling back on him, and oh, he wouldn't put it past her and they both know it). She always invites him in. She's actually got more in the way of manners than most people credit her with—actual Earth-type manners that don't involve Gating to an alien culture and figuring out how they do things there first. He kind of wonders where she picked them up, because she's told him enough—barely—for him to know she didn't get much raising. He knows she was orphaned at eight and went off to college at sixteen; what's in between she's still pretty vague on, though it seems to have involved a lot of time outside the US. Doesn't matter. She'll tell him sometime or she won't.

But when she invites him in, those nights, he just ... stays.

She never asks him to leave. He's not completely sure what's going on in her mind there, but he'll take it. The couch is fine for her—she can stretch out full-length on it without a problem—so he works out a method of letting her fall asleep next to him (and she just about always does) and then settling her there. Then he goes and makes himself up a bed on the floor. She almost always sleeps well then. And she doesn't ask about why he's sleeping on her living room floor when there's a perfectly good bed—two of them, in fact—just a few steps away.

And she hasn't missed a Friday at his place since the time she showed up there at six in the morning, even if she comes late. And she always stays.

He supposes some folks might say they were dating. He knows better than to even suggest it.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied rape of OFC. Aftermath of torture. Also, I blow up Kelowna and kill several hundred thousand people, including puppies and kittens and small children. Whoops.


	10. AUGUST 2006—OCTOBER 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonas comes to earth, Cassie goes to college, Lord Yu's First Prime drops by for a chat, Jacob Carter visits Earth. The IOA is a PITA; the Tok'ra have interesting hobbies; SG-1 has a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warnings in endnotes.

At the end of August Cassie comes home from Europe. She'll be home for a few days, then she's going off to UCLA. Moving into her dorm. Dani is loaning Sammy the truck for the move, since they're driving and it's big enough to hold all of Cassie's _stuff_ without the need to rent a trailer. Cam reminds her—gently—that she needs to tell Cassie about Abydos. Because Cassie is her family, and you don't keep secrets like that from your family. And of all the people Dani knows, Cassie is the one who will understand best what it means not only to lose your family, but the very ground they walked on.

She doesn't want to. Cassie is so happy. Filled with stories of her adventures over the summer. Looking forward to the greatest adventure of all. But she kept one secret from Cassie for years. She doesn't want to keep another.

So a few days after she's back, Sammy has all of them to the house for dinner. (Middle of the week. Special.) And Sammy sits on one side of Cassie, and Dani sits on the other. And Sammy tells Cassie something bad happened while she was away, and they didn't want to tell her and spoil her vacation, but they're going to tell her now.

And Cassie looks frightened, and asks if Sammy's all right. And Sammy says she is, but Dani can tell Cassie doesn't believe it, not completely, so Dani says: "Abydos."

And Cassie looks at her, and she forces herself to go on. To say the words that make the horror real all over again. _Anubis came to Abydos and destroyed it. Everyone there is dead._

And Cassie stares at her for a moment and says, "Everyone?" and says, "Did you look?"

And Dani has to tell her there was no way _to_ look. Because the Stargate was vaporized. The surface of the planet turned to molten rock. The atmosphere gone. Cassie stares at her for a long moment, then touches her face as if to wipe away tears. But Dani has never cried for Abydos, for her dead. And Cassie says, "I guess you really _are_ my family," and hugs Dani very hard.

More than family. They're sisters now. Each, in her own way, the sole survivor of a lost race.

That weekend Sammy and Cassie head west to begin Cassie's new life. College student, grown-up girl, and all Dani can think, watching them drive away from Sammy's front door, is: _safe, safe, safe._ Because Cassie has arrived at "safe" now: that nearly-mythical location they've been trying to conduct her to for the past six years. Whatever happens now, she can navigate her way through the rest of her life without adult intercession. It won't be pretty if she has to do it soon. But possible. Manageable.

Oh, god, she wishes Jack could have lived to see this day.

They want Dani to go with them and—under other circumstances—she might have been tempted. But (as always) there's so much to do here. It's only ten days since the Kelowna mission, and they're still getting Jonas settled in. (She didn't _really_ go over Landry's head when she called General Hammond about Jonas. Not really. But she knows Homeworld had to approve his petition for asylum, and she'd just wanted to make sure General Hammond knew everything about how useful he could be to the SGC.) Jonas is actually splitting his time between her department and Sammy's, because while he may be the last Kelownan in the universe with hands-on knowledge of _naquadriaah_ , by background and training he's more of a general historian. That places him squarely in AA&T's purview. And (she found this out on Jonas's second day on Earth) he has _total recall of anything he reads._

She hopes Sammy's done with him soon, because she wants him. He's reading his way through the SGC library: books, magazines, newspapers. He watches television, too. She's told him to come to her—or Nyan, or Teal'c—with anything he doesn't understand: Nyan and Teal'c have already been through the acculturation process, and she's the one who handled it. So far his questions have been amazingly few.

He misses Kelowna. The only time she's snapped at him (angry beyond thought) was when he mentioned Abydos to her. A comparison. Nyan had told him. But she can't bear to think of Abydos. In that they aren't alike: Jonas wants to remember Kelowna. So she pulled up all the footage she took on SG-1's first and second Kelowna missions (she didn't have her camcorder with her on the third; just as well) and copied it for him. He's easy to be kind to.

While Sammy's gone (ten day leave, and Dani envies her that, if she could only figure out a way to take a vacation and still keep the work from piling up) SG-1 goes out three times, with Jennifer Hailey as their fourth. Not a choice she would have made herself—since they had Hailey before and she didn't work out at all well—but she supposes Landry has his reasons. And this time there's no yelling, so maybe Hailey's mellowed. Or maybe it's because they've got Cam now.

They're chasing Vala. Dani isn't sure where the SGC is getting its information; Landry doesn't say. She doubts it would make much difference: they don't find her on any of the three worlds they check. All middle-sized towns—at least they were, once. All of them now are swollen with an influx of refugees from at least a dozen other worlds. When the _Goa'uld_ fight—and they are—anyone who can flee, does. 

If they don't find Vala, at least they pick up a little gossip. Nothing spectacular. Things they already knew. The last of the _Goa'uld_ who haven't sworn fealty to Anubis are falling, one by one. Bast, Olokun, Morrigan ... all dead.

#

It's two months since her family was murdered yet again (it seems, in a bizarre symbolic way, as if it's the same act, over and over and over again, though it's really her, pathetically repeating the same mistake over and over again, finding people to love so they can be killed). Two months since she got the information from Simon about Osiris's espionage against Anubis. It would be funny (actually, when she's had enough to drink, it _is_ funny) if they actually have the endgame here in their hands but are unable to use it for fear of attracting Anubis's attention.

Cam says if Tartarus is where Anubis's Queen—Ereshkigal—is, and it's where he makes his Kull Warriors, they should take it out first, and while he's distracted, they should be able to check out some of the other Gate addresses, at the very least. And destroying Tartarus will deal him a crippling blow. The Kull Warriors give Anubis incredible supremacy over the other _Goa'uld_ in ground combat, and in space, his superior numbers and his few superships are all he needs.

Cam's right. So all they need is a plan. And it needs to be a plan that _does not implicate the Tau'ri_, because they don't know why Anubis has held off on wiping them out so far, but what they _do_ know is he could do it easily any time he wanted to. They have three starships ( _Daedalus_ launched recently and _Apollo_ will be finished soon) and none of them, actually, is a match for even a conventional _ha'tak_. Almost all the 302s were destroyed, their pilots killed, over Antarctica. Two years later, they've built ships to replace most of the lost ones: _Prometheus_ carried, _Daedalus_ carries, _Odyssey_ carries, eight 302s each, and there's another squadron of twelve based at Nellis. And none of those pilots has ever been in combat. They can fly their ships, but they can't fight them. Earth has exactly one qualified fighting 302 pilot ... and he's serving in a ground combat team.

When she has time, when she remembers (once a day, sometimes twice), she offers up a prayer to whatever there might be that hears prayers, if there's anything: _don't let anyone remember Cam can fly. Don't let them take him and transfer him back to the 302 program. I don't know if he'd survive._

She's not sure _they'd_ survive without him. He's their luck.

She's missed _Odyssey's_ return-trip to Atlantis: her paper on Ancient wasn't ready, and there's no point in sending it unfinished. Maybe she'll have it done in another two months (two and a half, really) when _Daedalus_ is ready to leave (she's being put on the Atlantis run because she's all-Asgard; better and faster and the IOA won that round with the USAF). She can only hope. Meanwhile, she's finally managed to start her lecture series. They're better received than she'd thought they'd be. People seem to like to get the chance to ask her questions. Mostly "why"—as in: _why do we do it this way?_ It's sobering to realize—looking out over the room, and it's pretty full, because even people who haven't been blackmailed (one way or another) into attending are here (and yes, just as she'd thought, Suzanne has washed out of her first try at GTO &T and will be taking it again as soon as the course repeats; will, in fact, probably be taking it until the end of time or Anubis's arrival, whichever comes first)—she's still the one who's been doing it longest. She's been here since the beginning. Since before there was a Stargate Program. Since this was Project Giza, Catherine Langford and her hand-picked stable of civilian geeks operating under DoD aegis.

So she answers the questions. They all really only have one answer: _because it will keep you alive._ But there are variations. Some of the explanations cover minimizing culture shock to the civilizations they come into contact with. Some of them cover the CYA school of Threat Assessment—a hard-learned lesson for her, but hey, you never forget the first alien plague you bring back to the SGC. Some of what she tells them is about keeping yourself, your teammates, alive under the worst possible circumstances. What part of the rulebook to throw out, and when to do it. Most of it's about The Rules, though. Written and unwritten. First Contact, site survey, assessing alien cultures. Negotiating. What to do and what not to do. Mostly, what _not_ to do, because the reason she's giving these lectures at all is because two SG Teams did things they shouldn't have, and in one case it wasn't their fault, but in one case it was. And it would be nice if she could be absolutely certain she'll actually be able to keep to her one-a-week schedule and get through this series by the end of the year. No guarantees there.

At the first lecture Amelia asks a question Dani especially wanted to answer. It's nice to have a few shills in the audience.

"Dr. Jackson, I know I'm never intending to go offworld, and neither are a lot of the rest of us. Why do we need to know about First Contact protocols?"

"Dr. Mertz, this is the SGC. There will be times, much as we'd like to avoid them, when the aliens will come to us. While a Foothold situation is slightly different than the average offworld First Contact scenario, a lot of the same basic rules still apply. We'll cover Foothold scenarios in detail later, but what you need to know right now is: even if aliens arrive in force, with weapons, it may still be a peaceful overture. Or an accident. And we all have to react accordingly."

Cam (just as he threatened) sits in the front row. Asks his own leading questions during the Q&As, ones she suspects other people in the room want to ask. (Or if they don't, they should.) How do you know a world's inhabited if the MALP didn't show you anything? What do you do if you make a mistake? What if the world's inhabited, but you really think you need to get a look-in at one of their sacred sites?

The first two have easy—or at least simple—answers. The third one depends entirely on evaluating the native race in question. That takes experience. The simple answer? 

If you don't have experience—lots and lots of experience—cut and run and send for someone who does.

#

When Sammy gets back, she brings them all UCLA sweatshirts, photographs of the campus, of Cassie in her dorm room. Cassie's room looks pretty much the way Dani's did, back in the long-ago. She remembers going off to college, not so very much younger than Cassie is now. Happy, for the first time in longer than she could remember. Sure her life—finally—was back on track, and everything was going to be okay now. Forever. And some things were okay, and some weren't, and some things were wonderful and some were disasters, but as the years have passed, it seems the bad has slowly and incrementally come to outweigh the good. There are good things in her life even now (and yes, Cam is one of them), but of course, even when they told Cassie about Abydos, they didn't tell her everything. That Anubis is still out there, and, apparently, unstoppable. That the destruction of Earth is only a matter of time, unless they can figure out how to do something the massed fleets of the _Goa'uld_ haven't been able to do.

The one thing they (meaning the SGC) _do_ have now is _naquadriaah_. Not that hard to make out of _naquaadah_ , apparently. Just mind-numbingly dangerous. And _naquaadah_ is one thing they actually have in adequate supply. They've been mining it for years. The _naquadriaah_ lab is at the new Delta Site. Too dangerous to have it on Earth. At least it won't be hard to blow it up to keep the technology from falling into the wrong hands. Apparently, the difficulty lies in _keeping_ it from blowing up. They don't dare convert more than an ounce at a time (according to Sammy) but they're already working on adapting one of the F-302s to give it short-range hyperdrive capacity (if they can do that, it will serve as a template for the rest), and sweetening the payload of their Gatebusters. They really _will_ be planet-crackers—and Gatebusters—once they're done.

But the fact they can blow up Tartarus isn't really useful: they still need to make sure it's the right place. And disable its defenses (if it _is_ the right place), because if it's really Anubis's throneworld—as Osiris suspected—its defenses will probably be able to withstand even a direct hit from a Gatebuster. And most of all, they have to do all those things (get there, assess it, blow it up) without letting Anubis know the _Tau'ri_ are involved. Which means talking their allies into helping. Which means _finding_ some of them, just to start with. Getting the Jaffa Free Nation to help, because the Free Jaffa have (by now) quite a bit in the way of what Cam refers to as " _Goa'uld_ rolling stock." Most of all, getting the _Tok'ra_ and the Jaffa to cooperate _with each other_ , which is not something they do well. And that means... finding the _Tok'ra._ The last time they heard from them was when the _Tok'ra_ sent them that message about Harry.

Meanwhile, Sammy kicks around some ideas. (Sometimes Dani wonders why they're doing most of this at Cam's house, and not at the SGC, but not really enough to ask.) She blew up Apophis's fleet once by taking a Stargate, dialing it into P3W-451, and dropping it into Vorash's sun. When enough matter had been sucked out of the sun into the black hole, the sun exploded (apparently this is something they do). Sammy could do that again wherever Tartarus is (assuming it has a sun nearby; they don't really know). And assuming they could dial up a second Gate in the system. They'd have a short window between the time the sun went unstable and the time it went nova—a few minutes—during which Tartarus would probably be vulnerable to attack. And the second active Gate in the system would keep anyone from using Tartarus's Gate to escape.

Cam doesn't really like that plan. They'd have to swipe a Stargate from somewhere to use to blow up the sun, and get it there, and they don't know how well the system is patrolled. They'd need to go in in a _ha'tak_ , which means borrowing one from the Free Jaffa, and they'd have to get the Stargate aboard the _ha'tak_. Apophis's attack ship carried a Stargate in its hold, but the Gate had been loaded manually, when the ship was on the ground, because it's way too big to fit into a set of rings and unless you're Anubis or have one of his ships, you can't just beam one aboard. A Stargate weighs 64,000 pounds. Not an easy thing to shift.

Another possibility involves sneaking into Tartarus (how?), disabling any security measures Anubis has on the Gate there, having the SGC send several Gatebusters through, and _running like hell._ Again, too many variables. Starting with how anyone could possibly sneak into Tartarus, just to begin with. It's true they have the address, and Anubis probably thinks it's a secret. But if Osiris could find it out, Anubis has to presume it's something that can be discovered. He'd be an idiot if he didn't keep his Stargate guarded, and unfortunately, they're pretty sure he isn't an idiot.

So most of the plans they can think of are things not worth trying until the situations gets worse than it is now. Meanwhile, they spend most of the rest of September looking for people who don't want to be found. Vala. The _Tok'ra_. Even the Lucian Alliance—which is certainly out there, and the SGC is trying to set up a meet with its leadership, and its leadership doesn't want to be met with. Dani isn't sure what they'd do with them if they _did_ find them. Their previous plan was to propose an alliance between the Lucians and Earth against the _Goa'uld_. She isn't sure that would really be in the Lucian Alliance's best interests now. She _does_ know there won't be any place for the Lucian Alliance in a galaxy Anubis rules, though, so ... maybe.

But the offer for alliance, when it comes, comes from the last direction anybody would expect.

The _Goa'uld_.

#

It's a pretty normal Monday at the end of September. Department Heads Meeting, and she doesn't know what Sammy's done to Felger, but he hasn't said a word in them in _weeks_. They're almost (not quite, but almost) down to the length they were under General Hammond, which is nice, because that means she can get most of the week's briefings assigned before lunch. Colonel Reynolds seems to have less to say each week than he did the week before; she supposes that's good, in the sense that no news is good news. General Landry never seems to notice, anyway.

Her day started particularly early this morning, since she had to brief SG-22 (Covert Ops) at 0530: they were going off on a two-week (if all went well) infiltration mission of a Jaffa training camp and possible temple site; there aren't many of those left, and their intel is spotty (it comes from the Free Jaffa, so it's at least not a trick, but it's not as detailed as anybody would like). Lieutenant Lewis is fairly fluent in _Goa'uld_ , so (providing he isn't killed) the team should be okay, but she ran them down the list of Things To Watch Out For anyway, and she and Lewis spent a few minutes speaking _Goa'uld_ to each other, so he could get his ear in. It helps. 

And now it's five hours later—right in the middle of the meeting—when Sanchez—who's on Control Room duty because Walter (for reasons she has _never_ understood) is in the meeting—comes dashing in to the Conference Room to tell General Landry SG-22 is back.

With a prisoner.

And Landry says they should take him to a holding area and he'll deal with it later, and Sanchez twitches and fidgets and finally blurts out that it's Lord Yu's First Prime, and Dani actually beats General Landry getting to the Gate Room floor.

Once, a long time ago, she impersonated Lord Yu's _lo'tar,_ Ji'an, to attend a Summit Meeting of the System Lords. The name means "healthy." It's a man's name, but the _lo'tar_ she'd been impersonating was male. None of the _Goa'uld_ who saw her at the summit meeting thought it odd that Yu would have a female _lo'tar_ : they all knew Yu, oldest of the surviving System Lords, was long past the age at which he could ever take a new host. Her presence—her _existence_ —was purely a matter of formality.

As Lord Yu's _lo'tar_ , she met—briefly—his First Prime. Oshu won't remember meeting her, though. She drugged him the moment she saw him: he remembers seeing Ji'an, not Danielle Jackson. If he had suspected for one moment she was anything other than his master's loyal _lo'tar_ , he would have instantly snapped her neck, even if Yu would kill him for it. When people refer to the Jaffa as the "slaves of the Gods," it's people like Oshu they're thinking of: utterly loyal and utterly devoted, even to a master he suspects to be less than omniscient, omnipotent, and immortal.

But never less than divine.

"Guys?" she says to 22. And yeah, she _so_ needs to talk to Oshu, but she won't get anywhere by speaking to him before she's spoken to her own people. Oshu is _hardcore_ Jaffa: he'd rather die than join the Free Jaffa, which means he's incredibly conservative (from, well, just about anybody's point of view). He'll talk to her because all _Tau'ri_ are equally lowly in his estimation, so women can hardly be lower than men, but if she insults her own people by addressing him before she speaks to them, she'll lose any possible points she has with him.

"Just came walking up to us," Major Warren says. He sounds a little bewildered. Reasonable. This was supposed to be a _covert_ operation, and she really doesn't want to think about the possibility of the _Goa'uld_ having spies in the SGC. "Identified himself as Yu's First Prime, and asked to speak to someone in authority on Earth."

She sees Oshu twitch at the use of Yu's name without his titles.

"We, uh, aren't sure if he _is,_ Dr. Jackson."

"Yes, Major. That's Oshu, First Prime to His Excellency the Jade Emperor, Yu Huang Shang-Ti."

"Pretty fancy name."

And oh god. That's General Landry. She turns. "As you know, sir, Lord Yu has opposed Anubis for over a thousand years, and his interests have been aligned with Stargate Command's in the past."

General Landry—she knows this from experience—prides himself on being a "straight shooter." Forthright and—in fact—confrontational. These methods of interaction _will not work_ with the _Goa'uld_ or their courtiers. Especially the household of the Jade Emperor. Doesn't Landry know anything about Ancient China?

"So what's he doing here?" Landry asks. That may just be the stupidest question she's heard all morning, and this is only Monday.

"I'll ask him, sir," she says, and she doesn't really mean to be rude, she's just thinking she needs to _get Oshu out of there_ before General Landry says something that really upsets him, because if he does, Oshu will kill him, and then the SFs will kill Oshu, and then she'll never find out why he's here, and, well, she's pretty sure it isn't in order to join the Free Jaffa.

So she motions, and SG-22 closes up around him again, and they all head off out of the Gate Room—all six of them—and as soon as they're out in the corridor, Major Warren says, "Where do you want him, Doctor Jackson?" and she says, "Secured Medical," because anything could happen, including him breaking her neck, and it would be nice to have doctors nearby. So they head up to Level 22 and into a nice locked room. There's an observation deck in Secured Medical, too, and recording equipment. That's a plus.

The room has a bed (which neither of them are going to use) but there are chairs, too, and she sits down, because she's never going to overawe him by trying to tower over him, even though he's not really very much taller than she is—not in the way Teal'c is, for example. This man serves _a god,_ and if she knows Oshu's god is nothing more than an evil lying little snake, she'll never convince him of that.

Oshu stands in the middle of the room, pretty much at parade rest, and looks at her. "You know who I am," he says.

"Yes." And okay. Some people might say being in here alone with him isn't the brightest thing she's ever done. But she's known Teal'c for ten years. Which means she knows exactly how strong and how fast he is—and was. If Oshu wants her dead, a couple of SFs aren't going to save her. So she'd just as soon have them outside the door as in.

"We have not met."

"Let us discuss why you wished to speak to the _Tau'ri_. Our interests and those of your master rarely coincide." Given that they've pretty much been trying to kill each other for the past ten years. And she's certainly not going to tell him where they _did_ meet. It's possible he'd feel the need to kill her for that.

"A common enemy makes allies of even sworn foes."

"The Heaven-Born do not ally themselves to mortals," she snaps. The _Goa'uld_ can't even be trusted in their alliances with each other. Yu would _never_ offer an alliance to humans.

"This is indeed so," Oshu admits easily. "But their regard exalts the humblest of tools."

All right. This is reassuring, at least in it fits in with _Goa'uld_ psychology—and Yu's psychology—as far as she understands it. They've made use of Yu. Now Yu wants to make use of them. Or _someone_ does. It's always possible Oshu is acting in his master's interests, but without his master's knowledge.

"Perhaps you will begin by telling us how you knew how to find our people." Considering SG-22's mission was supposed to be a _secret._

Oshu looks faintly amused. "My master has spies in other courts. The information was not difficult to obtain."

She's glad she's sitting down. She really is. Oshu has just told her the _Goa'uld_ have spies in the SGC, or someplace else where they can get their hands on their mission information, and that is not good.

"You knew our people would be there, and so you sought them out?"

"I have said so."

And not only "where," but "when." Almost down to the hour. _So_ not good.

"Perhaps at a future time we will revisit this matter," she says.

"Perhaps," Oshu agrees.

They both know damned well she wants information desperately. But the Jade Emperor's court on Earth—in Ancient China—was one of the places the art of espionage began; Oshu will hold the information back as a bargaining counter for as long as possible, and he may even be lying when he said he got the information from some other _Goa'uld_. Yu may have spies of his own here on Earth. It's possible. Of all the Jaffa who have embraced freedom, none have belonged to Yu.

"And now, we shall proceed to the reason for your coming here," she says.

"Should I not rather speak with your master?" Oshu asks.

"Should I not rather speak with yours?" she answers, and Oshu inclines his head. Point to her.

"My master acknowledges the timely gift of information regarding the purposes of the Abomination, the Dark One."

Anubis.

"We are sorry, of course, that it did not lead to his death," she says.

"Perhaps it may. My master understands you hold a member of the Abomination's court as your prisoner."

It takes her several seconds to work out what he's getting at. "Osiris," she finally says.

Oshu inclines his head. "My master asks you release him into his custody."

_Oh, like that's going to happen._ Even if Osiris were still Osiris and not Simon. She doesn't say so, though.

Suddenly she hears the sound of a microphone being turned on; the sound of a ... scuffle ... carried over an open mike. Then the mike is turned off again. She looks up toward the observation windows, but they're mirrored; she can't see anything. She turns her attention back to Oshu; she can't afford to be distracted.

"For what purpose?"

"He undoubtedly possesses information of value to my master. And it is well-known among the _Goa'uld_ that the _Tau'ri_ are ... delicate ... about obtaining such information."

"I think we might surprise you," she says. "Let us suppose that—hypothetically—we were to provide you with what you desire. We would also ask how your master would expect to make use of it. You will forgive me for speaking plainly, but if The Jade Emperor could destroy Anubis by direct means, he would have done so already."

"That is indeed so," Oshu says calmly. "But some time ago, word reached my master of a poison those who rebelled against Ra have made. It would amuse him to use this against the Abomination."

They're both speaking English, but she actually has to translate his sentences into _Goa'uld_ before she can figure them out. He's talking about the symbiote poison the _Tok'ra_ invented. "The Jade Emperor wishes to poison the Abomination," she says.

"And his traitorous Queen," Oshu says helpfully.

She gets to her feet. "I must confer with my superiors," she says.

#

It doesn't really surprise her that Teal'c is waiting right outside the door. The question is, where's Cam? She makes the shrug-and-handwave that means _where is everybody?_

"Colonel Mitchell and Colonel Carter are with General Landry in the Observation Room," Teal'c answers.

_Oh ... peachy._ "Let's go," she says. On the way there she gives Teal'c a quick run-down on Oshu's proposal. In Jaffa. No point in letting everyone in the SGC in on it just yet. Sometimes it's handy to have what pretty much amounts to a secret language.

They walk into the Observation Room. Nobody looks really happy. She glances down through the glass. Oshu hasn't moved since she left. He probably isn't going to move until she comes back, either. If then.

"People, we have a problem," General Landry says. _Only the one?_ she thinks. "Apparently we have a spy," Landry continues.

"The _Goa'uld_ are the ones who possess the spies," Teal'c says. "We possess a security breach."

Landry looks at Teal'c as if he can't decide whether he's making a joke or not. But actually, Teal'c's right.

"The _Goa'uld_ have had agents on Earth before," she says. In that whole lovely Adrian Conrad/Trust cock-up that nearly led to World War Three.

"I thought we got rid of all of them," Landry growls.

"Well, the CIA cleared the SGC two years ago," Sammy says. "But the _Goa'uld_ could have re-infiltrated Earth since then."

"I thought that damned Treaty was supposed to keep them off Earth," Landry says.

"The _Goa'uld_ /Asgard Protected Planets Treaty only requires the _Goa'uld_ not to invade or destroy Earth," Dani says. "Unfortunately, they're perfectly free to come here clandestinely."

"Well, what the hell good is it then?" Landry demands.

It's a stupid question—since up until Anubis showed up, the Treaty kept Earth from being _destroyed_ —so nobody answers it.

"I want to know where he got his information about SG-22," Landry says, glaring at her.

"I'm pretty sure he'll tell us. We have things he wants," she says. "What we have to decide is how much cooperation we're going to give him."

"How about 'none?'" Landry says.

Oh, somebody didn't have enough coffee this morning, and it wasn't her. "Of course I'm not suggesting we turn Dr. Gardner over to the _Goa'uld_ , General. But we already happen to know the information Yu wants, since Oshu is talking about destroying Ereshkigal as well as Anubis. If Yu doesn't know where Tartarus is—and he might not—Oshu is here for that, as well as for the thing he can't possibly get, no matter _how_ good his spies are."

"And I'm sure you'll tell me what that is, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says heavily. 

"The symbiote poison the _Tok'ra_ have developed," she answers without comment. She's been sniped at by experts. Sarcasm is a weapon of the powerless and the insecure. She really thinks it's beneath him. As well as a tactical error. "There's no way the _Tok'ra_ would ever hand something like that over to the _Goa'uld_."

"There's no way we'd hand something like that over to the _Goa'uld_ either!" Landry snaps.

"Which is why, sir, we'd have to handle this very carefully," Cam says firmly. "But I really don't see there's any harm in letting Dani talk to the guy while we do our best to get ahold of the _Tok'ra_. Because we really need to know where our leaks are coming from."

General Landry's really pissed, and Dani isn't quite sure why. Nobody's dead. In fact, Oshu's their prisoner right now. He could just as easily have taken SG-22 prisoner, and they could be having a much-less-pleasant talk with him.

"General, I believe Oshu is negotiating with us in good faith, as far as possible," she says. "He didn't have to place himself at our mercy. He didn't have to let us know we had a leak. And he's right: Anubis is Yu's enemy as much as he is ours."

"So you're saying we should trust him," Landry says.

"No. I'm saying we should talk to him."

"It would probably be a good idea to recall all offworld Teams for the time being, sir," Cam says. "And put our offworld sites on alert."

"Thank you, Colonel Mitchell. I _am_ still capable of running this facility," General Landry says blightingly. "Very well, Dr. Jackson. Talk to him. Find out what he wants. And find out where our damned leak is! Meanwhile, Colonel Carter, I need you to make sure our systems are _completely_ secure. And I'm going to have to go tell the President somebody around here has a snake in their head."

"Look on the bright side," Sammy says to nobody in particular after Landry stomps out. "It _could_ be someone in the IOA."

"Too much to hope for," Cam says regretfully. "'Sides, they don't get to see most of the potentials. Just the completed mission reports. Has to be someone who sees proposed missions."

Dani frowns. "We should ask Graham. Because ... everything's pretty much locked up on Mondays—because that's when Sammy and I get the briefings for the missions for the next seven days or so, and—wouldn't General Landry be sending a report somewhere then? So who reads that?"

Cam sighs. "Just half the people in the Pentagon, Homeworld, and the Joint Chiefs. But yeah. It's a place to start. When was this mission assigned? You remember?"

"Sure," she says. "It was assigned four weeks ago. They've been training for it, because it was a two-week insertion. Or it was supposed to be," she adds darkly. "I pulled everything we had in the archives on Jaffa training camps, and briefed Amelia as my backup in case I was offworld this morning."

"So plenty of time for the information to get into the wrong hands," Cam says, shaking his head. "Well, off you go. You want to take Teal'c with you?"

She glances at Teal'c. "Um, I don't think that would really be the best thing," she says tactfully. Oshu may be willing to talk to her, god knows why, but he and Teal'c would probably set each other off big time. 

Teal'c knows exactly what she's thinking, of course. He bows. "I shall wait outside, Danielle Jackson," he says.

"Let's get going then," Cam says.

She returns to the room. Teal'c takes up a post outside, along with the two SFs. This time the door is left unlocked, so they can get in to her more quickly. She actually thinks Teal'c will be of a little more use if there's trouble—in the sense that he might be able to stop Oshu from killing her. She doesn't think Oshu is here to kill her, though. Not unless she forces him to. And there are so many ways she could do that.

She sits down again.

"A First Prime is a valuable tool." She won't call him a slave, even though she knows Oshu thinks of himself as a slave, and considers it a badge of honor to be a slave.

"This is so," Oshu agrees.

"No honorable servant would deprive his master of a valuable tool. That would be theft."

"Indeed," Oshu says.

"You must believe you will be allowed to return to The Jade Emperor's service, then."

"I believe you will wish me to carry a counter-proposal to my master."

"You do not think we will give you what you have come to ask for."

"I believe the _Tau'ri_ do not trust their gods." It's what their name means. The _Goa'uld_. The Gods. Even their name is a lie.

"Trust is weakness," she says, and Oshu smiles faintly.

"Yet the _Tau'ri_ trust the _shol'va_ Jaffa, and the rebels against Ra. Perhaps the _Tau'ri_ are weak."

"If the _Tau'ri_ were indeed weak, you would not insult your master's name by seeking us out," she answers. "Do not force me to say things we both know." _Such as listing the very large number of so-called "Gods" we've killed in the last ten years._

Oshu inclines his head. Another point to her. Negotiating with _any_ of the _Goa'uld_ takes forever. Negotiating with the ones who've adopted Far Eastern personas—or their courtiers—takes twice as long. And this _is_ a negotiation. "You wish us to provide your master with the _Goa'uld_ Osiris and the poison the _Tok'ra_ have developed. The second is not impossible."

"And the first?" Oshu asks.

"Regretfully, Osiris is dead." (Actually, she doesn't regret that in the least.)

Oshu regards her for a long moment. "The host remembers," he says at last. (Something the _Goa'uld_ only admit when it serves their purposes.)

Oh, god, how does he know they got Osiris out of Simon and that Simon's alive? Lucky guess? Are their leaks worse than they thought? Or is he just assuming they'd turn any captured _Goa'uld_ they got their hands on over to the _Tok'ra_ so the host could be freed? 

Skaara was freed.

Skaara is dead.

"Fortunately for us," she says, keeping her face expressionless. "And so he was able to tell us everything. Osiris spied on Anubis extensively."

"How am I to judge the value of what a host remembers?" Oshu says dismissively.

"By the fact he told us Ra banished Anubis from the Council of the System Lords for making _harceisis._ I'm surprised he was not executed." She's giving up information, but it's not strategically-valuable. And Yu already knows it. He was there. 

"Kebauet was executed. The Abomination's line was destroyed," Oshu says. 'Kebauet' is the name given for the wife of Anubis in some of the earlier texts. And the fact Oshu knows these things is a mark of how much Yu trusts him. He nods, satisfied. "I will believe you have the answers my master seeks."

"Good. Because we need to know just how you knew to contact us."

"I have told you."

"That you obtained the information from another _Goa'uld_. And we need more than that."

"It will not help you."

"In that case, you should have no objection to telling me." This is _not_ how she wanted to spend her morning, and at that, it's an improvement over the Staff Meeting.

Oshu takes a while to think it over. While he does, she contemplates her intense desire for another cup of coffee. She also wonders how they're going to get him out of here again, because she's pretty sure General Landry isn't going to go for that. Oh, well. Maybe she can sneak him out after Landry's gone home for the day. She can't be court-martialled, and she's pretty sure she knows how to run the Dialing Computer by now. "Very well," he says at last. "You know Lord Ba'al was one of the first to pledge fealty to The Abomination. My master believes he plays a dangerous game."

Ba'al tortured Jack and it took all her clout with the _Tok'ra_ —and the fact Jacob was around to help—to get him loose. Barely. Ba'al's domains are so far away they'd never crossed paths with him before Kanan stole Jack to complete his mission to Ba'al's secret lab. And in that single piece of information is the refutation of two keystone concepts the _Tok'ra_ —yes, and Teal'c too—have presented as absolute fact and which the SGC has accepted no matter how much contrary evidence its amassed: that the _Tok'ra_ will not behave toward their hosts in the way the _Goa'uld_ do—though Jolinar already proved they will, trying to steal Sammy's life for her own purposes—and that the _Goa'uld_ do not study and create and build. Ba'al did. She saw Ba'al at the _Goa'uld_ Summit Meeting, where he voted in favor of Anubis rejoining the Council: Yu warned Ji'an against consorting with him, but hadn't felt it necessary to explain his reasoning to a mere _lo'tar_. Ba'al, she remembers, hadn't brought a _lo'tar_ of his own to the meeting. 

"Ba'al isn't loyal to Anubis?" she asks.

"It is not for us to know the ways of the Gods," Oshu says reproachfully. "The Abomination has decreed the First World shall remain untouched to witness his final victory. Yet Lord Ba'al has placed many agents here to work in secret. My master believes he intends to make the First World into his new throneworld, and hold it against his overlord."

Well, it's nice to know they're officially last on Anubis's "to-do" list. Slightly less nice to know their government (or whatever) has been infiltrated by Ba'al's agents. Not completely useful at the moment (though it might be later) to know Ba'al has plans ranging from an outright double-cross to just preparing himself a bolt-hole. "Perhaps your master has shared with you what information he hoped to gain from Osiris?" she asks. It's time to get back to work.

"My master believes Osiris knew the location of The Abomination's throneworld. It is a closely-guarded secret, known to only a few."

"It would be the place where he creates his Kull Warriors. The place where he sequesters his new Queen," she says. Probing.

"Yes."

"Osiris believed he _did_ know. You will understand we have been unable to verify his information."

"It is a place called Tartarus," Oshu says. 

They're fencing. Neither of them wants to give up too much too soon. They don't trust each other, but they need each other—and matters are complicated by what she knows and Oshu will never admit: Yu is the next thing to senile, and any plans Oshu makes on his master's behalf can be overturned in an instant. "Yes. So he said," she responds.

"My master proposes this plan. He will send an envoy to The Abomination to discuss terms of surrender. Certainly The Abomination will not honor them, but that will not matter. The envoy will be carrying the poison. It is undetectable as a weapon?"

It's time for her to give up something else. And this time it's something big, something that's actually useful. A piece of information the _Goa'uld_ haven't had until now, or Oshu wouldn't be asking. She hesitates for a long time before answering. "Yes."

"You are certain of this?"

She hesitates again, then decides to tell the truth. "I myself carried it into a Summit Meeting of the System Lords, and was not detected." She wonders—knowing everything she now knows—if it would have been better to have simply broken the vials anyway. Simon would be dead, yes, and that would have felt like—have been—murder. But would everything else be better? Or worse?

She's finally managed to shock him. He actually moves. But not toward her. Away. He turns his back. "You lie," he says, addressing the opposite wall. "If you had possessed this poison and been where you say, no one of the Council would now be left alive."

"I went to kill them, it is true. But Osiris came before the Council to ask for Anubis's restoration. I was ordered to refrain." Grossly oversimplifying the entire matter, but she really doesn't feel like going into all the details for Oshu.

"My master was attacked there," Oshu says, still not turning around.

"I did not attack him," she says. No, that was Osiris, who has never, apparently, believed in playing fair any more than Simon has.

"My master's _lo'tar_ vanished," Oshu says. He turns. Looks at her, black eyes burning into hers, and she _knows_ he's guessed the truth. She thinks of shouting for Teal'c, but Oshu could reach her before Teal'c could stop him, and to show fear would be weakness. So she sits perfectly still. "It was most odd," Oshu continues. "My master's _lo'tar_ was a young boy—I knew him well—yet I am told my master was accompanied at the summit by a female." He doesn't move.

"I have never raised my hand against the person of the Exalted Lord Yu Huang Shang Ti, the Jade Emperor," she says steadily, and at last Oshu settles. "And I tell you this, a thing known to me to be true: the poison is undetectable. It will kill both _Goa'uld_ and Jaffa." And Kull Warriors, since they're basically clones-with-idiot-symbiotes. And she's not even going to think about the mental gymnastics Oshu's doing in order to be able to think about—let alone discuss—killing "gods." She's just glad he's apparently decided honor doesn't require him to kill her just this minute. "So the envoy of your master will go to Tartarus, carrying the symbiote poison," she says, returning to the point. "Won't Anubis wonder how his stronghold has been discovered?"

"Of course," Oshu says. "And for that reason he will wish to receive my master's envoy, and question him. But the moment this envoy arrives within Tartarus, he will disseminate the poison."

She thinks for a moment. Who would Yu send? "Your master would not send a human on such a mission," she says at last.

Oshu looks ... amused? Contemptuous? She isn't quite sure. "No," he says.

"The poison will kill Jaffa as well as _Goa'uld_ ," she repeats carefully. The death-throes of the symbiote in the Jaffa's pouch will release toxins, killing the Jaffa who carries it. For that matter, they aren't even sure Jaffa who are on tretonin are immune to the poison.

"Yes," Oshu says. And it's obvious he can't imagine she could see any problem with this plan. Even though it involves ordering someone to commit suicide in a horribly painful way. 

She takes a deep breath, trying to make her conscience _shut up_ even though she knows it's murder, and if the SGC involves itself in this they'll be condoning—enabling—murder. She thinks of Abydos, and silencing her conscience is easier to do. There's nothing here for her to decide, one way or the other, right now, anyway. And she already knows the _Goa'uld_ are monsters. "Therefore, you wish us to provide your master with a quantity of the poison and with the location of Tartarus," she says, making everything clear. "If we do this, The Jade Emperor will use it against Anubis." _And not, please god, against either the Tok'ra or the Free Jaffa, because the poison will kill either of them just as dead._

Oshu nods. She gets to her feet again. "I must, again, confer with my superiors," she says. He doesn't move as she walks from the room.

#

It's two hours later, and the five of them are gathered around the Briefing Room table. Sammy's still running the Security Diagnostic on the SGC Computers, but she hasn't found anything yet. All the offworld Teams have been called home. The offworld sites—Alpha through Delta—have been placed on alert. The President has been notified there are _Goa'uld_ spies—somewhere—among the people who see the notifications of where the SGC is going to send its Teams. Fortunately, that isn't as long a list as the one of the people who get to see their completed mission reports, but on the other hand, espionage means _illicit_ access. So they can't simply assume one of the people who's allowed to see those reports is their _Goa'uld_. Or an unwitting human agent, though it would be much easier if it _was_ a _Goa'uld_. You can _find_ a _Goa'uld_. MRI, just for starters.

They've pinged all the _Tok'ra_ listening posts they know (no answers yet), and now they're trying to decide what to do about Oshu and his plan. It occurs to Dani—just for once—to be grateful for Landry's idiot insistence on backstopping everything, because she had to drop all the week's briefing assignments in Amelia's lap. This takes precedence. She'll catch up when she can.

She knows Teal'c doesn't approve (because Teal'c _never_ approves of having anything to do with the _Goa'uld_ ), but, oddly, he isn't saying so. Sammy doesn't have much to say either, except when Landry asks her a direct question, and then she usually says, "I don't know, sir," because what Landry keeps asking her is about things she can't possibly know, like when and whether the _Tok'ra_ are going to get in touch, and doesn't he think Sammy worries about her father? Jacob Carter has been a _Tok'ra_ for years, now, and Sammy hasn't seen much of him for the last two.

Dani told Cam everything Oshu told her before they all got to the Briefing Room. She doesn't have much to say, either. There are a thousand places at which this plan can go wrong, even if they can contact the _Tok'ra_ , even if they decide to go through with it. Even if the _Tok'ra_ are willing to hand over the symbiote poison. How do they keep control of it until the last possible moment? How do they ensure Yu keeps his word? Trusting him is out of the question, and blackmail simply won't work.

It's still their best shot.

And so now Cam has briefed General Landry, explaining things Landry should know already. About their history with Yu. About their history with Anubis. About the fact they can't attack Tartarus openly without triggering a retaliatory strike against Earth they have no real way to defend themselves from. (They don't have any _unreal_ way to defend themselves, either. That's beside the point.) About the fact that—as the _Tok'ra_ have said ever since they've known them—the _Goa'uld_ , if unified under one single leader—as seems to be about to happen with Anubis—would be about a million times more dangerous than they are now, and they aren't exactly a walk in the park at the best of times. They only seem silly (when they do) because they're _alien_. But they're never anything less than dangerous. Cam doesn't say they should trust either Oshu or Yu. But he does say it sounds to him as if they should give the proposal serious consideration.

"Dr. Jackson? What do you think?" General Landry asks. 

He actually wants her opinion? That's a change. "Ca-- Colonel Mitchell is right. We're running out of options and time. We may be last on Anubis's list, but once he's subjugated the last of the _Goa'uld_ , it's only a matter of time before he comes to Earth again. And not very much time." Because while he'll probably want to take out the Free Jaffa and the Lucian Alliance first, neither one will probably take him very long at all.

Once again Landry repeats that he doesn't like dealing with the _Goa'uld_. Does he think _any_ of them do? They don't have a choice any more. But Cam is giving her _that look_ , so she doesn't say so. And Cam says he simply feels it would be a good idea to keep their options open. Set up a way of getting in touch with Yu if they need to. See what develops. If the General agrees, of course. That leads to another half hour of fussing (on General Landry's part) before he can talk himself around to the idea of letting Oshu go. She's just as glad he does, because she's already made up her mind Oshu _is_ going to go, one way or another. It will be much easier with Landry's permission.

And General Landry dismisses them, and they all go up to her office and spend a few minutes kicking around ways of getting in touch with Yu (with Oshu, really) when they need to without getting themselves set up to be ambushed and kidnapped. It's Sammy who suggests they give Oshu one of their radios, and a neutral planet to be on. If they dial in to that address (from anywhere)—and he's there—they can talk to him. He won't know where they are, and he won't be able to get at them, since they'll be the ones dialing in. And Oshu will be safe doing so, since he can bring as much security with him as he likes. They poke at the idea for a while, trying to find holes in it. Nobody can. So Dani goes down to Supply and gets a radio, and checks it to make sure it's in working order, and writes out the symbols for Gate address they've picked (since she's sure Oshu doesn't know their algorithms, and if he does, she doesn't want to know), and goes back to Secured Medical.

She walks inside. And Oshu is still standing there. Motionless. "I have come to tell you what has been decided," she says.

"Very well," Oshu answers. And she could be here to tell him he was being executed or being crowned Emperor of Earth, and his expression wouldn't change, and she's hated the _Goa'uld_ for ten years, finding new reasons to hate them every year, for all the things they've taken from her (Sha're, Jack, Skaara, _Abydos_ ) but she thinks she may hate them most of all for this: that they can possess such riches of honor and loyalty and even love, and squander them without valuing what they destroy in the slightest.

"We will return you to your master. We will provide you with a rendezvous point and a means to communicate with us, as well with as a schedule for doing so. No one knows this rendezvous point but SG-1. No one will." (It was a decision they came to up in her office. Considering the compromised nature of their security, Cam said, just as well to keep it to themselves. They'll give General Landry a different address. He won't have any way of checking it, anyway.)

She passes him the slip of paper. It's folded. The security cameras in her office didn't see her write out the symbols—she was careful—and she hasn't unfolded it since. Oshu tucks it into his belt without looking at it.

"And you will meet me there?" Oshu asks. His voice holds no expression, nor does his face.

She smiles. "You will go there. Go in force, if you like. At the time appointed, we will dial in to the planet's Stargate and speak to you through this device."

And now Oshu _does_ smile. Appreciation of a worthy foe. Or possibly just relief that the _Tau'ri_ aren't incredibly stupid after all. She shows him the radio, shows him how to operate it, shows him what channel they will call in on.

"How long must I wait for word?"

A problem they hadn't expected. She takes off her watch and hands it to him. It's set for twenty-four hour time. "Ten days from now, and in another ten days, and another, from the thirteenth hour to the fifteenth hour, await word." If they haven't gotten this plan off the ground in a month, chances are they can't. "On one of those days, one of us will speak to you. It must be to you, Oshu."

"The life of a Jaffa warrior is uncertain in these times, Dr. Jackson. I might die tomorrow."

She wonders what she's done to finally merit being addressed by name. "Then—with great respect—it must be with your master, The Jade Emperor, himself. I do not know the rest of his court. I have no intention of walking into a trap."

Oshu inclines his head. More than a nod. Less than a bow. "Then I shall await your word." The watch joins her note in his belt. He holds the radio in his hand.

"I assume you wish to be returned to the same world you left?" she says.

"That is acceptable, yes."

She goes to the door. Even now it makes her skin crawl to turn her back on him. There's a click, and a mike goes live. She keeps from flinching with an effort. "I'm wiping the Secured Medical tapes now, Dr. Jackson," Graham says.

"Thank you, Graham," she says. She opens the door, and Cam and Sammy and Teal'c are there, along with the two SFs. "We're ready to go," she says. She expects trouble—at least a little posturing—between Oshu and Teal'c. But Oshu pretends Teal'c's invisible, and Teal'c lets him do it.

The seven of them (this time) return to the Gate Room. The SFs walk behind them. They're armed, but what they could do against Oshu is, well, debatable. He's a Jaffa warrior with a symbiote. This makes him even stronger than Teal'c, something she would _never_ say out loud. Tretonin has liberated the Jaffa from their dependence on _Goa'uld_ symbiotes. But that freedom comes at a price: less strength, less endurance. They don't, in fact, know what the long-term effects of tretonin will be. Teal'c is the one who's been on it longest, and he's only been on it four years so far.

"Where to?" Cam asks when they get there.

"Back to where he came from," she says.

Cam nods to Sammy, and she goes up to the Control Room to tell Walter (who's back at his post) where to dial. The Stargate engages.

It's a moment, Dani realizes, requiring trust. Oshu hasn't seen the address that was dialed. They could be sending him anywhere. And he has no weapons. "We've dialed P2R-371," she says. "That's the planet you came from. Do you want me to go through with you?" She'll need a GDO to get back, but someone can bring her one from Supply in just a few minutes.

"It would not be safe," Oshu says, and walks up the ramp. In moments he's gone, and the Event Horizon collapses.

She sighs. Today's crisis is now over. "I need a new wristwatch," she says, randomly. Cam glances at her and she shrugs. "He had to know when to be listening for us," she says. "I gave him my watch."

Cam nods. "Better get a new one, then."

So she does, and goes on with her day. Goes to find Amelia, goes to review the briefing assignments, goes to pull her notes together for the briefings she may-or-may-not be here to give. Thank god for Jonas; he's been taking over more and more of her workload. Amelia is threatening to marry him. Dani makes a mental note to do something especially nice for Jonas. She'll talk to Cam. Cam always has good ideas.

When she's done with playing catch-up, she goes back to her office. Cam is there with a sandwich for her. She checks her (new) watch. It's after 1500. She sits down in her chair, sighing, and picks up the sandwich. There's coffee, too, and she doesn't even mind that it's cold. 

Sammy hasn't heard anything yet.

#

On Tuesday Richard Woolsey descends upon them. (Hey, hey, IOA: how much time did you waste today?) The fact there are _Goa'uld_ spies somewhere in the US Government is supposed to be a secret, but apparently he knows, and Dani is desperately glad that—one—they got Oshu out of here when they did and—two—Landry only _thinks_ he knows the details of their rendezvous. Because Woolsey wants to know where their information came from, and if it can be trusted, and why they let an enemy combatant just walk out of the SGC without trying to stop him, and _what they're planning to do about the enemy aliens._ General Landry points out—perfectly correctly—that anything taking place outside of Cheyenne Mountain Military Base (outside in the sense of "elsewhere on Earth") is not the SGC's problem. Their mandate does not run one foot outside The Mountain. If Woolsey wants somebody to stop the _Goa'uld_ invasion of Earth (Woolsey's term for it) he should go talk to the NID. (Ignoring the fact the NID was the group riddled with _Goa'uld_ spies—and _Goa'uld_ —the last time. So ... possibly not all that helpful.) Landry, of course, wants to share his joy. Which is why _they're_ roped in to talking to Woolsey (and there goes any hope she has of catching up with everything she let slide on Monday, because Woolsey badgers the four of them for hours, on the theory that if he keeps demanding answers, eventually what they tell him will become something he likes). At least they discover where Woolsey got his information. The President—who got his information direct from Landry—briefed him personally.

And now Woolsey keeps asking them what he's supposed to do about it. As if they know. As if he'd actually follow any of their suggestions.

Cam gives it his best shot. He tells Woolsey the only thing they can do right now is _keep this quiet_ while they try to track the information back to the source (meaning Ba'al) and see if they can get details on who exactly is here, and where and what they're doing (since they know Ba'al still uses Jaffa, there's a possibility the Free Jaffa have—or can place—spies within Ba'al's ranks, which they don't mention to Woolsey) and meanwhile, Cam is sure the President is handling this through the proper channels.

And that should settle things. And it doesn't. Because Woolsey wants to go over the whole matter _again_. Asking them why they did what they did. Why Landry didn't stop them. What the President is going to _do?_ (And how the hell do _they_ know?)

Cam takes point through all this. Woolsey has _mostly_ forgiven her for the things she said to him in his tour of the Gamma Site, but they've got a long history of not getting along. He thinks she's a Communist, god knows why. She thinks he's a fascist bean-counter, with slightly more reason. She'll never forgive him for the things he said when he was trying to dig up dirt on the SGC after P3X-666. Janet's body was barely cold, and he was saying they never should have gone to rescue SG-13 in the first place, that it was a waste of money and resources.

So they squander the whole day on holding Woolsey's hand, and for nothing. He isn't satisfied, and they have no idea whether or not he'll keep his mouth shut. If he goes off and yaps to the rest of the IOA, they might just as well publish the information in the _Denver Post_. 

At the end of the day, by mutual consent, the four of them head off to O'Malley's. She's been back here a few times (with the others) since the first time she brought Cam here all those months ago (over a year ago by now, she thinks) and new expectations have overlaid old ghosts. It's both nice and a little sad to be out among all these innocent civilians. Because these are the people they're supposed to be protecting from Anubis. And they know how incredibly outmatched they are. Certainly they'll die trying, but what good is that if Anubis wins? No good at all. 

_"It's better to make the other guy do the dying."_ Jack always said that. And she's trying, Jack, she really is. They all are, Cam most of all, and she knows, she _knows,_ Jack would have approved of Cam. Would have thought SG-1 was in good hands with him. She knows there's no afterlife, no second chances (unless, like her—like, in fact, all of them at various times—you simply come back from the dead), but the habit of imagining that the dead in some way go on, require placation in their concerns for the living, is a persistent cultural concept, impossible to shake. As if an unfinished life must be lived out somehow, if only in the imagination of the survivors. It's strange, though. She's never worried about what her parents think (not for years, anyway) or what Sha're thinks. Only Jack. Perhaps because his death, unfair though it is to think so—to find herself sitting as Lord-of-Ma'at in judgment—was a so much greater interruption. Unfinished life. Task left undone.

But it no longer jars to sit around a table, the four of them, and have the fourth be Cam. They order, and talk about nothing in particular. Not the last forty-eight hours. Not the future, whatever it's going to be. Not the question of whether—eight days from now—they'll be in a position to contact Oshu and tell him they can proceed. After they eat, she and Teal'c watch Sammy and Cam shoot pool. It's relaxing. Sammy wipes up the floor (table?) with Cam, and he laughs every time she wins. Dani and Teal'c tease them both. Then it's time to go. Cam volunteers to be the one who drives Teal'c back to The Mountain. The three of them go their separate ways. It's not—she knows—for long. She's been home _(Jack's house)_ about forty minutes—long enough for Cam to drop Teal'c at the Mountain and drive back here—when she hears the sound of his car. She's been—pretty much—waiting for him. She closes the piano (making the time to practice has been hard, but she's done it; it's comforting to be able to get up and play on nights she can't sleep) and reaches the door about the same time he does. She opens it and he comes in, bag over his shoulder. No real pretense he's going to be leaving.

Almost as if they're dating. Though they aren't. It's just...

She's selfish, she knows. But in another way, not. Because this isn't about him, or her, or even (god help her) _them_. It's about the fact that since Jack was frozen, since he died (she can think about that now, although she knows she still can't talk about it) her little sleeping problem has gone from bad to disastrous. And if it were anyone else, it would be a simple call: take them off the line. Except it's her. And SG-1 has been Earth's first-and-last hope for ten years, and (god help them all) she really doesn't think that's changed. She needs to be out there. And she just sleeps better with someone else around.

Yes, Sammy's got a spare bedroom now. She could move in with her, at least for sleeping. But that would mean Sammy would have to either report her or not, and that wouldn't be fair. If anybody's going to break the rules—if she's going to break the rules _with_ anybody—it's going to be with her Team Leader. That's Cam. Always has been, really, even when the Pentagon was still playing around with the idea of Joint Command.

And it isn't every night. Just every Friday, and a few other nights a month. Doesn't count, really. She tells herself that because she needs to.

So he comes in, and she asks if he'd like something to drink, and he surprises her by saying "coffee," so she gets them both coffee, and brings it out, and the bourbon, too. And he smiles at that, and says "gonna convert you," and she makes a face and tells him it's too damned sweet except in coffee. And tips some into her cup just to prove it. And he sighs, and leans back on the couch, and asks her if she thinks Woolsey's going to keep his mouth shut.

"No," she says after a moment. She thinks about it. "He'll tell Chapman," (Great Britain) "and Chapman will get all transpersonal and tell LaPierre," (France) "and LaPierre will remember France is a member of the EU and tell Lindquist," (Sweden) "and since that means four members of the IOA will know, Colonel Chekov will know. He'll scream to high heaven about the violation of Russia's "special relationship" with the SGC, which means Biedermeyer," (Germany) "will hear about it, which means Rogers," (Canada) "will find out. And her feelings will be so ferociously hurt that Shen will hear about _that,_ if nothing else. Shen'll be furious China wasn't told immediately, and ... who does that leave?"

"Lapland?" Cam guesses.

"Not a member of the International Oversight Authority. Um ... Japan and Italy, I think. Probably Mexico, too, at this point; I'm not really sure. I know they wanted to make it the same as the UN Security Council membership in the beginning, but that would have meant kicking Canada out and letting in one of the Middle Eastern bloc, so... Anyway, this should lead to another merry round of argument over—one—taking the Program public—two—giving the IOA control over the Program, and—three—moving the Stargate out of the US."

"Well, _that's_ not gonna happen," Cam says.

"Not our Stargate," she points out. "It's—technically—Russia's. It's the original Giza gate, but they salvaged it from international waters, and we're just leasing it. As for taking the Program public, we can't stop them from talking. Especially on their own turf."

"You'd think they'd know better," Cam says meditatively.

"When have politicians ever been anything but stupid?" Dani answers bitterly.

"Well," Cam says thoughtfully. He drapes an arm around her shoulders, and its presence makes some of the knots in her stomach ease. "Some of 'em are doin' the best they know how. We're just lucky we don't got the job of meddlin' with 'em. We just got to dodge 'em a little."

_And hope the Tok'ra show up._ She doesn't say that. She knows Jacob (and Selmak) will answer their message if they possibly can. But even if they do, a response is far from gaining the cooperation of the _Tok'ra_ Council. She finishes her coffee leaning into Cam's soothing weight. And wishing for a world where needing to stay alive, needing to keep _him_ alive, was less important than deciding what to do about him, and the "them" that doesn't exist.

#

Wednesday. She doesn't have any briefings (since all offworld missions are cancelled until further notice, and she wonders just what General Landry is telling the Pentagon about that), and is called to sit in on a debriefing to translate. So far the week has been an unholy mess, but today is worse: they've lost SG-2.

Landry's message reached them on Monday, apparently, but they were almost a hundred and sixty kliks away from the Gate. They headed back, checking in every two hours. They ran into trouble, and SG-5 went out in support this morning...

At least they brought back the bodies. And their gear. Sound recorders and video cameras. He didn't think to tell her what she'd be seeing. At least she knows how it ends.

"Yeah, okay, this is unusual," she says in the darkened briefing room.

The video is up on the viewing screen (second time through). Dr. Coburn was doing his job up until the moment he died. He filmed his teammates' deaths. The camera's audio records the Marines' firing in the distance, but SG-5 won't reach SG-2 in time. Coburn knows he's a dead man. He also knows the information the SGC will retrieve from his corpse is more important than a few more seconds of life. 

She's so proud of him. And she'll never be able to tell anyone.

"Dr. Jackson?" General Landry asks.

"You see in the footage that SG-2 was initially attacked by a group of Jaffa belonging to Ba'al—you can identify them from their tattoos. And while it's not uncommon for _Goa'uld_ to have Jaffa bearing the marks of other _Goa'uld_ in their armies, due to capture and surrender, none of Ba'al's Jaffa are so marked, indicating they're all from within his domain. The dialect they're speaking reflects this as well. However, you also see that they're supported by two Kull Warriors." She points to the screen with her laser pointer.

"Ba'al works for Anubis, and so do the Kulls," Landry says dismissively. 

She glances at Colonel Harper. He's looking determinedly blank. "Yes. But Kull Warriors don't operate in _conjunction_ with Jaffa troops. Even if the Jaffa were willing to take orders from them, according to the autopsies we've done, Kull Warriors can't speak. And it's really unlikely the Jaffa would be commanding the Kull Warriors in addition to their own troops. But they're obviously working together. So ... either Anubis has started using Jaffa again, or he's given Ba'al Kull Warriors of his own. Neither possibility seems very likely."

"Well, he has to have done one or the other. Which is it?" General Landry demands.

She looks at Harper again. "You didn't see the Kull Warriors, Colonel?"

He shakes his head. "We killed a bunch of Jaffa. By the time we got there, it was too late. Best guess is they'd all ringed up to a mothership."

"Which means the Kull Warriors retreated, another thing we've never known them to do." And if Coburn hadn't thought making this record was more important than trying to stay alive until help reached him—he couldn't have, but he must have hoped—they wouldn't know even this much. She takes a deep breath. "From what the Jaffa said to each other, they knew SG-2 would be there. This was--" she hesitates.

"Well, Dr. Jackson? Don't tell me you don't know what they were saying."

"It was a reward, General. Being allowed to go in and hunt down SG-2 was a reward."

Harper doesn't flinch, because Marines don't flinch. But oh, god, the SGC knew where SG-2 was, it knew their security had been compromised. She thought all the offworld teams were _back._

"How many Teams are still offworld, General?" she asks.

"Everyone was recalled immediately, Dr. Jackson," Landry says irritably.

She looks at Colonel Harper. And SG-2 was on an extended survey that was supposed to take weeks, and they'd been heading back for the Gate as fast as they could, and it hadn't been fast enough. And Landry hasn't given her a straight answer. "How many Teams are still offworld, General?" she repeats.

#

One.

SG-7. Doing a long-term study of a binary star in a place where you need Sunblock One Million to survive. It _is_ survivable—barely. But the background radiation fries communications, and it's hard to be sure their initial message got through. According to the log, it was received and acknowledged, but that doesn't mean it was understood, because ... SG-7 isn't back.

So SG-1 and SG-5 go looking.

Not one of her better days, from the moment she has to explain to Cam about SG-2 (not that she does, really, because Base gossip got there first and Colonel Harper got there second, but she's the one who knows what all those Jaffa _said_ ) to the point where she tells him that 48 hours and counting after they found out their assignments are something one of their worst enemies knows, one of their teams is still out there. And even if it takes days or even weeks for the information to get from the SGC to Ba'al, SG-7 has been off at its observatory for almost six weeks now. Plenty of time. So ninety minutes after SG-5's debriefing comes to an unscheduled and unceremonious end, the nine of them—SG-1 and SG-5 both—are heading back through the Gate. Every possible square inch of skin that can be covered is covered, and their faces are slathered in sunblock. They're each carrying two of the extra-large "desert" canteens, and it probably won't be enough. But they can re-supply at the observatory (if it's still there), and if it isn't, they can run like hell and probably get home before they die of dehydration.

They step through the Gate, and the heat hits like a hammer. It's bakingly hot, and bakingly dry, and it's freakish, because the suns are high overhead but the sky is still almost black. The air's thin here. They've got breathing masks with supplementary oxygen, as if they were mountain climbers. Life has long since deserted this world—the only oxygen in the air (and it isn't much) comes from esoteric chemical processes that maybe Sammy understands. Cam tries to raise Major Woeste on his radio, but all he gets is hash and static. Sammy says that's normal. Electromagnetic interference. It doesn't mean anything one way or the other.

You'd think—with the whole planet being dead as ... oh, she can't think of something sufficiently dead to compare it to, because the past is a living thing, and other things that ought to be dead and stay dead (like Apophis) so rarely take the hint—they could have put their observatory right on top of the Stargate. But Sammy says no. The disruption every time the Gate engages would actually manage to scramble everything the atmosphere doesn't. So they've set up their camp about three kliks away. It's a long walk. The heat is punishing. Maybe 140 down on the ground itself. A little cooler up in the air. Nobody's idea of fun.

But they get there, and Major Woeste and Specialist Adams and their half-dozen scientists are all there, and all alive. Yes, they got the message from the SGC two days ago. Yes, they acknowledged it. No, they have no idea what it said—because of the atmospheric interference here, messages are sent through as high-frequency bursts, with the message itself repeated several hundred times, and decoded on the receiving end. And they simply haven't been able to unscramble it. Most of their equipment tends to malfunction in the heat. Considering that even inside the buildings, with the cooling-units running flat-out, the temperature is only down to, say, a hundred and five, she understands the equipment's feelings.

Cam tells SG-7 to pack up everything they can pack in fifteen minutes, because they're being evacuated _now._ And she and Sammy do what they can to help—packing gear, soothing tempers, promising a full explanation _soon_ —and Harper and his men go around mining the huts with C4, so nothing they leave behind will be of any use to anybody.

She's sweated through four liters of water on her way here from the Gate, but her BDUs are bone-dry. They all fill their canteens up again while they work. She finds every canteen she can, and fills all of them, tells everyone to drink as much as they can hold before starting out. If—for any reason—they can't leave the planet instantly when they reach the Stargate, the water and the hydration will buy them all a little more time.

Major Woeste wants to wait for night before starting out—apparently the suns actually set (eventually). Cam says they can't afford to wait: sunset is eight hours away. And half an hour later (not fifteen minutes, but it's give the scientists the extra time or shoot them) they're ready to go, and then Cam and Colonel Harper make them leave half the stuff behind, because they'll never make it back to the Stargate under these conditions carrying forty and fifty pound packs. And at that point Cam has to do what she's known all along he hasn't wanted to do, and tell SG-7 why it's being yanked out of here so damned fast. Because SG-7 is, in its current incarnation, Major Woeste and Specialist Adams and six civilians. And they're about to start _pissing kittens,_ because all of them know the original message from the SGC came two days ago, so now they're thinking the _Goa'uld_ are going to show up any minute, rather than that the longer they're left alone, the more likely it is they're going to be safe.

At least it gets them moving. And they get half a klik away from the outpost and Colonel Harper blows it—so at least they've covered their backtrail—and all they have to do is get the rest of the way back to the Stargate without too many people collapsing from the heat. They're lucky. Only two of the scientists go down. Teal'c carries one and Harper carries the other. She and Sammy have to help a third, but at least the woman is moving along under her own power. She's the oldest member of the group, and damned tough. But there are no surprises, and no _Goa'uld_ , and the DHD works, and the GDO works, and they go home. The Gate Room is sixty-eight degrees year-round, and walking down the ramp feels like stepping into an icebox. And now all the Teams (that are left) are home.

And that's Wednesday.

#

She follows Cam home that night after she's done the latest installment in her weekly lecture series (it seems more-than-a-little ironic now, considering maybe nobody's ever going to be going anywhere ever again). Follows him home without checking, without asking. Just goes. Pulls up right beside him in the parking lot, and he hasn't even gotten out of his car yet. He's just sitting there, head thrown back, listening to the radio. A song she doesn't recognize. She doesn't know if it's really right to be here, but she's thinking about SG-2. About Coburn. About all of them. And she thinks it probably hurts Cam more, even though the Teams aren't—on paper anyway—his responsibility.

But Cam leads SG-1, and Flagship's leader has _always_ been responsible for all the Teams. It doesn't matter if Colonel Reynolds is the one who's at the table in the Staff Meetings or if Graham is Landry's XO, or that Cam is only a Lieutenant Colonel, and therefore outranked by a good third of the people leading the Teams. In reality, in practice, the Teams won't go to Colonel Reynolds or to Graham with their problems. They'll go to Cam. And SG-2 is dead, and she's not sure it could really have been prevented—with the odds they were facing, the SGC could have thrown all three Marine units at it, even all the SAR Teams, and they'd still have gone down—but she thinks they should have tried harder. It hurts to lose a whole team that way.

SG-2 was Charlie Kawalsky's team, once. She thinks about Kawalsky, who offered to take her dancing. Only it hadn't been him at all; it'd been the _Goa'uld_ in his head, pretending to be him. Wearing him—his memories—like a suit of clothes. And she gets out of her Jeep and walks over to Cam's car and taps on the window. And he rolls it down and she says: "So. What's for dinner?" And he smiles a little and gets out and they go inside.

He makes hot dogs and macaroni and cheese (but the macaroni and cheese is from scratch; she hadn't actually thought that was possible) and "throws together a pan of brownies" (which is his word for it; it still looks like cooking to her) and they go off and play some more of that game for a couple of hours. They've been playing it for weeks, and they'll probably still be playing it next year (he wasn't kidding when he said it could take a hundred hours to finish—more, probably, since each of them keeps stopping it to explain things, though they're different things). And she thinks she's beginning to understand the attraction of these games, even the violent ones Teal'c likes. They're unreal. Reality is the footage she saw today in the Conference Room—friends and teammates being murdered in front of her eyes by alien warriors who would be happy to do the same to her (or worse) if they could. This isn't real. There aren't even real people involved, just computer-generated images. And—when you play—you have control. You can stop it. You can walk away. You can cheat. 

You can win.

When the brownies are done and have "set up a bit" they have them with ice cream and fudge sauce and whipped cream. There are even cherries.

And they're both exhausted—because any kind of exertion in the kind of heat they went off to today will tire you faster than hiking for miles in temperate conditions—so she takes the bowls and adds them to the dinner dishes in the dishwasher and makes sure there's soap and sets it to run, and comes back and Cam's making up the couch. And she ducks in and out of the bathroom quickly, coming out, ready for bed (and still freezing, because one damned desert planet and her body always manages to convince itself that's the way things should be, and it's almost October now, so it's not as if it's warm here in the first place), and stretches out, and before she can do it herself he covers her up and tells her to sleep well.

She'd wanted to tell him nothing that happened today was his fault. Certainly not the fact SG-2 died. Their luck ran out. If another team had been on-world with them at the beginning of the ambush (or two, or five, or half-a-dozen), they would have been killed as well. The Kull Warriors can be stopped, yes—but only with specialized weapons that aren't carried as standard issue. They got SG-7 home safe. It should be enough, but of course it isn't. They all measure their lives by their losses, not their successes.

She doesn't sleep badly, all things considered. The nightmares will come later, once her mind has had time to process all this new information.

New horrors.

#

Thursday.

The President calls General Landry, and Graham tells Cam, who passes it along to the rest of them over lunch: he's wanting to know just how long offworld travel is going to be suspended. All of them look at each other, because isn't it obvious? If they can't get rid of the _Goa'uld_ spies, _forever_. Because any time they send somebody offworld, they'll be sending them right into Ba'al's hands. But...

"Wait," she says. Because _this doesn't make sense._

And the next thing she actually notices, the four of them are all back in her office, with the door closed, and Cam is waving his hand—slowly—back and forth in front of her face to get her attention. She has a vague memory of Sammy holding her by the arm and walking her through the corridors, but she was thinking. Thinking consciously, about something she's been mulling over ever since Oshu came, ever since SG-2 was killed.

When Cam sees her eyes focus, he waits expectantly.

"Oshu implied Ba'al wasn't ... absolutely trustworthy," she begins. 

Cam nods, but she can see what he's thinking: _you don't mean to tell me any Goa'uld ever trusts any other Goa'uld, do you?_

"I mean, apparently Anubis has enough reason to think Ba'al wasn't as enthusiastic about serving him as he might be. But that's not enough reason to kill him —I mean, considering he's apparently useful, not that _Goa'uld_ need a reason to kill each other. But… Ba'al uses Jaffa. Anubis doesn't. Anubis uses Kull Warriors. None of the other _Goa'uld_ have them. Kull Warriors work alone. They don't lead other troops, and they don't serve any _Goa'uld_ but Anubis."

Cam thinks about it for a minute. "Anubis was framing Ba'al." But he still sounds puzzled.

"Ba'al has spies on Earth. Oshu implied they were for the purpose of preparing Ba'al either a future throneworld or an escape route. Anubis can't know Oshu's told us about them—because (so we assume) he doesn't know Yu's spies have infiltrated Ba'al's court. But (at the same time) Ba'al has no reason to expose the existence of his spies by openly using their information—not if he's planning to use them later."

"But Anubis has every reason to do something like that," Cam says.

"Yes," she agrees, nodding vigorously. "To punish Ba'al, to let him know what he's done has been discovered ... there could be a number of reasons, including to make us attack Ba'al and scatter our resources. Or even to use us to look for Ba'al's spies here on Earth, and save him the time and trouble."

"So, because of the ambush, Ba'al now knows Anubis knows about Ba'al's spy network, and Anubis knows that he knows, and Ba'al--" Sammy stops, as if her head hurts. "So now what?"

All of them look at Teal'c.

"Ba'al will know his treachery has been discovered. He will be forced to make amends, or suffer the consequences," Teal'c says with certainty. "It is traditional for a _Goa'uld_ in such circumstances to execute his agents and offer their heads to his overlord in apology."

"Yuck," Cam says comprehensively. "So, the chief bad guy is gonna come to Earth and start making like Duncan MacLeod?"

She can't place the reference, but it seems to amuse Teal'c. "I do not believe so, Colonel Mitchell. Under these conditions, I believe merely ordering them to commit suicide will be considered sufficient."

"Will they?" she asks.

"Undoubtedly they have received _za'tarc_ programming," Teal'c says calmly. "They will."

Dani shudders and Sammy winces. Both of them know more about _za'tarcs_ than they really want to.

"So we just wait for a rash of unexplained suicides, and we have the 'all clear?'" Cam doesn't really sound as if he's buying it.

"Ba'al is unlikely to execute all of his agents," Teal'c answers serenely. "But he will conceal the information he obtains more carefully in the future. And once he is dead, the problem will be at an end."

Cam takes a deep breath and exhales sharply. "Yeah. Look on the bright side, I always say. That's what I like about you, Teal'c. You're _cheerful._ "

"So do we, uh, tell General Landry that, um...?" she says.

Cam shakes his head. "Give it a couple more days. By then it ought to be safe to have the NID poke around and dig up the list of suspicious deaths of people who have probably been playing pattycake with the bad folks."

She wants to say _but we could save them_. But they can't. They don't even know who they _are_ right now, and if Teal'c's right (and it sounds right, and Teal'c just about never blows smoke) they've been programmed to kill themselves. If they're told to. And probably if they're caught, too. And if the _Tok'ra_ don't know how to break _za'tarc_ programming (and they don't) certainly no one on Earth does. In every way that matters, Ba'al's agents are already dead. She still doesn't like it, and she knows Cam doesn't either. But they're here not even talking about _whether_ to make an alliance with the _Goa'uld_ , but _how_ to. Something that would have been inconceivable a decade ago. 

Things change. 

And not for the better.

#

Friday.

Nobody's been through the Gate all week, and the SGC feels oddly crowded with all the Teams home. General Landry hasn't officially mentioned (to her, to Cam, to Colonel Reynolds, even to Graham) that she's supposed to be figuring out how to get them all back through the Gate again, so she doesn't worry about it, aside from preparing briefings for the next missions that may-or-may-not be in the schedule, because it's a luxury to have the extra time to do that. A luxury, really, to have the whole day to spend at her desk, working, and she imagines (not for the first time) a life where that would be her norm. She really can't, though. SG-1 has been her life for too long, with everything else tucked in around the edges. The day will come (probably sooner than later) when she will die, some permanent final time, several hundred light-years from home. Better than dying on Earth because Anubis has come. 

And better either of those deaths than the life she would have as Anubis's slave.

Six days from now, Oshu will be waiting to hear from them. General Landry has one address, but Oshu will be waiting at another (a good thing, too, since apparently Anubis knows everything Ba'al's spies know). No point in contacting him if they haven't got anything to say, but ... what about ten days after that?

It turns out she really doesn't have to worry, because right around 1700, SG-1 is paged to the Gate Room. They've just received Jacob/Selmak's IDC.

General Landry orders the iris opened, and they come through. Dani can almost feel Sammy breathe a sigh of relief when she sees her father: things haven't been going well for the _Tok'ra_ lately. Their spies tend to be members of the courts of the lesser _Goa'uld_ , because they're easier to infiltrate. And those _Goa'uld_ are the ones who have been primarily targeted by Anubis and those who serve him. When he destroys them, the _Tok'ra_ in their ranks (more often than not) go as well. How ever many _Tok'ra_ there were to begin with (something the _Tau'ri_ will never be permitted to learn), their numbers have been steadily decreasing over the centuries. The greatest losses have been in the past decade—more than in all the years before. Many of the _Tok'ra_ , Dani knows, blame the _Tau'ri_ , and with a certain amount of reason: Earth's entry onto the galactic stage destabilized things drastically.

"Hi, guys," Jacob says, looking at them. "What can I do for you?"

"It's kind of a long story, Dad," Sammy says.

#

"You want us to do _what?_ " Jacob says about fifteen minutes later.

The eight of them—them, and Jacob/Selmak, and General Landry, and Graham—are in the Conference Room. General Landry has explained they need the _Tok'ra's_ help, but he's left it to them to explain just what kind of help. Dani covers Monday (Oshu's arrival and proposal) and selected parts of Wednesday (SG-2's ambush, and what the Jaffa who killed them said). Cam and Sammy do everything else.

"We would be very careful," Cam says emphatically.

Jacob ducks his head; they see his eyes flash. Symbiote bioluminescence; it's weird and disturbing even though they know he's _Tok'ra_. "To place our greatest weapon against the _Goa'uld_ into the hands of a _Goa'uld_... This is a matter that must certainly be placed before the entire Council. Or what remains of it," Selmak says. 

Only it doesn't sound like Selmak. She knows the symbiotes' voices are all supposed to sound almost identical, and a lot of people can't tell them apart at all. But voices are her business. She frowns and cocks her head, looking at them. The symbiote looks back at her. "I see from Jacob's memories that you were fond of Selmak. I regret to inform you that Selmak is no more. I am Ladrain," the _Tok'ra_ says.

"Hello," Dani says. "I am pleased to meet you. My condolences on the loss of your previous host."

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson," Ladrain says. "I will miss Amanon greatly. But Jacob Carter's mind is highly diverting."

"What happened?" Sammy asks. Dani knows Sammy spent a lot of time with Selmak. More than she did, really, since both of them were scientists.

Ladrain turns to look at her. "Our lifespan is finite, Colonel Carter. Selmak had reached the end of hers. Fortunately, I was in need of a new host, and nearby."

Dani can feel Sammy's confusion. Jacob Carter went to the _Tok'ra_ in the first place because he was dying of cancer. But Selmak healed him. When she died _(he died, it died),_ Jacob Carter could simply have come home. And obviously it didn't even occur to him. And that hurts—or might hurt—later. Dani knows what it's like to feel your family just doesn't think you're worth bothering with.

But they don't have time for that now.

"We will be grateful for any assistance the _Tok'ra_ may render," Teal'c says magisterially. "Anubis imperils all life within this galaxy."

"Don't I know it?" Jacob says, and it _is_ Jacob speaking; Ladrain, having introduced himself, has ceded control of the body to his host again. "I think you guys better come back with me and put this one to Per'sus yourselves. That is, if it's all right with you, Hank?"

It always seems odd to hear General Landry addressed by his first name. But he and Jacob Carter were in Washington at the same time. They knew each other before Jacob became a _Tok'ra_ and General Landry became head of the SGC.

She's watching General Landry out of the corner of her eye. Two and a half years of him now, and one of the most important things she's learned (almost an instinct, really) is when he wants her looking at him and when he doesn't. Now isn't one of the times. But she still wants to know what he's thinking. And she can tell he doesn't want to say "yes" and can't think of a good reason to say "no." Does he think they're all planning to defect to the _Tok'ra?_ (Tempting, but no.)

He doesn't answer directly. Instead, he says the President is putting a lot of pressure on him to plug the holes in their security (unfair, as it probably isn't _their_ security that's leaking) so the SGC can resume normal operations. The implication being that SG-1 is vital to this effort. Meaning no, they can't go talk to the _Tok'ra_.

She can't watch Cam and Landry at the same time, because Cam's beside her, but she feels him shift. And he says, "Well, sir, actually Dr. Jackson's got a theory about that."

And for a moment all she can think is _"What theory?"_ But she keeps herself from looking at Cam—with an effort—and turns to General Landry. "Of course it's only speculation," she begins. (Rule Number One for dealing with General Landry: start by saying you're probably wrong.) She goes on to tell him what she and Teal'c worked out between them: Anubis was behind the ambush of SG-2, not Ba'al; Anubis was using it to punish Ba'al by revealing he knew Ba'al was (in some sense) plotting behind his back, and they have a reasonable expectation Ba'al will order his agents on Earth to kill themselves, and (being _Goa'uld_ agents) they will undoubtedly have been programmed to comply. She keeps the explanation simple. No mention of the fact there might be some agents left in place, no mention of the fact Anubis might have hoped to draw Earth into attacking Ba'al.

"And how are we supposed to prove your ... theory ... Dr. Jackson?" General Landry asks.

"Well, Hank, you know where your reports go," Jacob says. "Have the NID poke around and see if there's anyone that could possibly have access to them that's turned up missing or dead in the last couple of days. That's what I'd do, anyway."

General Landry gives her his best _"I don't like surprises"_ look, and, well, she isn't thrilled about having had to mention this, either. But next Wednesday they're supposed to check in with Oshu, and they can't do it from here. She's starting to realize that. And she knows she'll only make things worse by explaining she wanted to collect more data to try to prove her theory, because she can't quite figure out how she would have done that. Though possibly Sammy could have.

And General Landry—who still hasn't given permission for them to go off with Jacob/Ladrain—gets to his feet (and so do Cam and Sammy, both standing very straight) and says he needs to go make a couple of phone calls, and Jacob says they'll amuse themselves. And once Landry's gone, Jacob says: "You kids in the doghouse?"

"No, Dad." Sammy has on her best innocent expression. 

Dani sees Jacob sigh. "Well, General Landry doesn't seem happy with you."

"It's probably, um, me," Dani says. She waves her hands. She doesn't want to come out and say General Landry doesn't _like_ her—because that would make her sound childish—but really, she suspects he doesn't. "Um, civilian," she says.

"That's right, honey, you are," Jacob says. (Jacob's "honey" is an entirely different "honey" from Cam's "honey." Or other "honeys" with which she has been addressed in life. Which is interesting, but so far from the point right now.)

"I mean, I think I confuse him sometimes," she says. A statement which is known, in polite circles as "a little white lie," as if mendacity came in colors. And Jacob nods as if he believes her, but she doesn't think he does. So she gets up to pour herself another cup of coffee, and Jacob asks if she'll get him a cup too, and Sammy asks, sounding surprised, if he's drinking coffee again, and he says he's going to see if Ladrain likes it, so Dani asks how he takes his coffee (because she never knew Jacob Carter, not really, before he was Blended, and afterward, he never drank coffee) and he tells her, and she brings over two cups and sets one down in front of Jacob, and he takes a sip, and winces, and sets it aside, and pours himself a glass of water. (Dani guesses Ladrain doesn't like coffee either.)

He and Sammy talk. Not to the point, since the point is "why didn't you come home after Selmak died," but about family things. Mark and Angie and the kids. And about Cassie (and at least he's stopped calling her "that little alien kid"). 

About twenty minutes later General Landry returns. He's still looking cranky. But he says he's spoken to the White House (there are perks to having a Red Phone right there) and they'll begin looking for people who fit the profile (there was a profile?) And meanwhile SG-1 can go off with Jacob to present their case to the _Tok'ra_ Council. He doesn't say they're to come back here immediately once they're done, but it's heavily implied: she's explained to General Landry that Oshu won't speak to anyone but a member of SG-1, and in practice that means her, Sammy, or Cam (Teal'c is out of the question for obvious reasons). He might even believe it, but what she _knows_ he believes is that talking to _Goa'uld_ minions is beneath his dignity. So that means they have to be back here on Thursday. (Or it would if General Landry actually had the address of the planet Oshu will be waiting on, which he doesn't, even if he thinks he does. They've run more complicated missions, but not since Landry took over.)

So they go off to gear up for offworld. Jacob tags along. She thinks it's odd, and wonders why she thinks so, then reasons it out. If General Hammond had still been here, he and Jacob would have stayed together until they were ready to go. Jacob would have used the time to find out all the things about Sammy he knew she wouldn't tell him and General Hammond would (something that always drove Sammy crazy). But he doesn't try that with General Landry. And Landry wouldn't know, anyway.

They're only supposed to be gone for a couple of hours, but they're all carrying full packs configured for overnight or longer, because, well, you never really can count on things like that when you're going off to visit the _Tok'ra_ , especially these days. Their security might be compromised, or they might have to run at a moment's notice, and anyway, _Tok'ra_ food really sucks. So she takes all the chocolate in her desk and her backup stash of coffee and all of them draw extra MREs and extra ammo. And they go.

Jacob (or maybe Ladrain) dialed them out, and Walter sent through a radio pulse to keep the Gate open while he got down to the Gate Room floor. The SGC will have a record of that address now, but of course it isn't their final destination. They step through into a hot dark world. The sun—suns—are setting, and there are giant ferns as far as the eye can see. The air is humid to the point of rain, and her glasses mist over instantly. She pulls them off and wipes them. Cam looks around, rubbing the back of his neck.

"So, you folks want to tell me what's going on?" Jacob asks.

"Here?" Sammy asks right back. Teal'c swats something out of the air. Dani can't see what it is, but she can hear the impact; whatever it is, it's big.

"I guess not," Jacob says, relenting. They turn away from the DHD as he dials again.

Their next destination is more comfortable: a warm dry desert, and the sun is near the horizon. "Warm" is a relative term, too: it's comfortable, not scorching. She finishes drying her glasses and puts them back on again.

"So," Jacob says, and it's obvious he doesn't intend to move _from this spot_ until somebody tells him something. He looks at her, but she's just puzzled. They really did tell him everything back at the SGC.

"We're supposed to contact Oshu on Thursday," she says. "We didn't know whether we'd be able to reach, well, _you_ by then. And..." She looks at Cam.

"Because we weren't sure who was reading our mail, we didn't want to give out the actual rendezvous point," Cam says. "So, ah, we're actually the only ones who know where Oshu's going to be."

"And you didn't feel like sharing this with General Landry?" Jacob says.

"Thought he might take it the wrong way," Cam says blandly.

Jacob makes a face, and says, "I hope you know what you're doing," which doesn't make a lot of sense to Dani, because she's thought the matter over carefully, and thinks if Ba'al gets the information about the rendezvous (the false information, which is all he can get) and goes there, and finds nobody there, he'll just decide Oshu's decided not to play with them. So that's good. It will protect Oshu, and it will protect them.

And Cam says, "Yes sir, I think we do," and Jacob looks a little startled, as if he hadn't expected an answer, and looks at Sammy, so Dani does too, and Sammy's looking stubborn (but she does that a lot of the time around Jacob), so Jacob just shrugs and says "come on." And they all step into the rings, and the rings go up, and go down, and when they've collapsed again, they see the familiar _Tok'ra_ tunnels around them. Familiar to the rest of them, at least. This is the first time Cam has visited the _Tok'ra_.

Now comes the hard part. Convincing the _Tok'ra_ to hand over the symbiote poison to the _Goa'uld_ in aid of a plan that isn't quite thought out yet. That's pretty much _her_ job.

There are a couple of familiar faces on the Council—Garshaw, Per'sus—but most of the others are new: Orippe, Bescus, Anstan, Serther. That doesn't necessarily mean they're new _Tok'ra_ , only new hosts, but once the introductions are made, she finds out it's new both ways. Which isn't as good as it might be, because Per'sus has no love for the _Tau'ri_ and she's never been able to really figure Garshaw out at all and now she's got four _Tok'ra_ to deal with she's never met before, and Jacob/Selmak would have told her at least a little about them, but Jacob/Ladrain hasn't.

She begins at the beginning. The _Tok'ra_ aren't actually known for their patience, but on the other hand, they live much longer than humans, so patience is relative. What they _do_ like is having all the facts, so she begins with the last debriefing of Simon Gardner and the information obtained from Osiris's memories: that Anubis's eventual plan is to remake "all Creation in his image." That he made _harceisis,_ which was the cause for his original banishment under Ra. That during his millennia-long exile from the _Goa'uld_ Empire, he (somehow) journeyed to the Higher Realms (whatever they are) and gained technology and information that has allowed him to pretty much conquer the _Goa'uld_ Empire. That only a few System Lords continue to defy him—Yu being one—and that as soon as they've fallen, Anubis will move on to Part Two of his plan. Whatever it is. Even if they don't know, they certainly know it involves the eradication of the _Tok'ra_ , the _Tau'ri_ , and the Free Jaffa. And the _Tok'ra_ may-or-may-not care about the _Tau'ri_ and actively loathe the Free Jaffa (she doesn't say this) but they certainly don't want to be eradicated themselves.

She tells them they know the location of Anubis's throneworld, where he sequesters his Queen and creates his Kull Warriors. And that one of his enemies has come to them with a plan to destroy not only Anubis, but Ereshkigal and the Kull Warriors as well. But it requires the aid of the _Tok'ra_. Saying Yu's First Prime came to the SGC to ask them to provide him with the _Tok'ra's_ symbiote poison is about as far as she gets before the Council begins explaining—loudly, and mostly to each other—why such a request is impossible to honor. She waits. Negotiations with the _Tok'ra_ are never quick. Eventually the Council stops yelling at each other. Per'sus turns to her. "You must understand such a request is impossible to honor, Dr. Jackson."

"I hope the Council will consider carefully, Councilor Per'sus. An open assault on Tartarus will not be possible for any of our forces."

"You mean the _Tau'ri_ do not wish to try," Garshaw observes coolly.

"Well, it's not like we've got all that many ships," Cam says regretfully. "And I'm pretty sure Anubis doesn't have the welcome mat out. Couldn't just throw a bomb through his Stargate and hope for the best." If they could have done that, they would have done it weeks ago. Months.

"What guarantees do we have Yu will not simply use this weapon against us, instead of against Anubis?" Ladrain asks. "Perhaps you have only heard what you wished to hear."

"We don't deny that's a possibility," Cam says. (The hand-off goes as smoothly as if they'd rehearsed it for months, and in a way they have. It's Cam's turn now.) "There's still a lot of details to be worked out here. Don't want anybody to go runnin' into this half-cocked. Figured the first step was seein' if you folks were willing to help."

"Perhaps the matter does merit further discussion," Orippe says, glancing apologetically at Per'sus. She sounds reluctant, but if the _Tok'ra_ take forever to come to a decision, nobody can say they don't know what's going on out here these days. Their current intelligence is undoubtedly better than the SGC's. And their losses have been—proportionally—higher than Earth's.

"Perhaps, Colonel Mitchell, you and your people would be willing to withdraw to allow the Council further opportunity to consider your information?" Per'sus says.

"Glad to," Cam answers easily.

One of the _Tok'ra_ standing at the door of the Council Chamber comes forward and escorts them out. She introduces herself as Elaise (Elaise/Isaine, actually) and seems _very_ taken with Cam. Dani supposes it's the luck of the draw: Cam has his own group of Crazy Aliens who take one look at him and can't think of anything better to do than get him naked. So far it's been one _Tok'ra_ and that bitch Vala, so maybe it's hosts and former hosts. (He dated Sammy before she carried Jolinar, so that doesn't count.) 

Elaise takes them all off to a waiting room (certainly not a detention area, though none of them could find their way back even to the Council Chamber from here, let alone to the rings, and the rings are the only way out of the tunnels, so it might as well be). And Elaise drops a number of broad hints about how wouldn't Cam like to go off with her for a tour of the tunnels—alone—and Cam just smiles and refuses to pick up a single one of them, and finally Elaise gives up (looking disappointed, or maybe it's Isaine who's looking disappointed) and goes off. And Cam heaves a deep sigh and sits down on something that looks a little like a hay bale (only it isn't nearly as comfortable) and says, "Are they all like that?"

And Sammy snickers and says: "You never met Anise."

Dani rolls her eyes. Anise put the "perverse" in "polymorphous perverse." She's pretty sure about that. She doesn't want to discuss her theories about _Tok'ra_ sexual mores right now—since Sammy will think about the fact her Dad is a _Tok'ra_ , and, well, some things are better not thought about—so she pulls off her pack and digs through it for her journal. Might as well make notes on the new composition of the Council while it's fresh in her mind. Cam pulls out a deck of cards, and he and Sammy deal them out. They talk Teal'c into playing, too. "How would we?" Dani says after a while.

"What?" Cam asks. The three of them are sitting on the floor now—easier to play. They've dealt out a fourth hand, but nobody's playing it. Odd.

"Keep Yu from double-crossing us. Because they're right: the poison will kill anyone with a symbiote."

"Depends on how much cooperation we get," Cam says after a minute. "Have to involve handing over the goods at the last moment. Think Oshu would go for that?"

"Maybe." She thinks for a moment. "Anubis probably wouldn't let Yu bring a _ha'tak_ into the system. I mean, it's not as if he's going to be _letting_ him do this at all—the idea is Yu sends an envoy to Tartarus unannounced—as a show of strength—to sue for surrender. But he won't send a _ha'tak_. Anubis would destroy that immediately. It will probably be a _tel'tak_."

"So ... a show of strength, but not too much strength?" Cam asks.

"My guess." She looks at Teal'c. He nods. Her guess agrees with his. 

Sammy looks thoughtful. "So we rendezvous with the envoy's ship—outside the system—hand over the poison—follow it in as close as we can, and then ... hope everything goes according to plan?"

"Assuming we get the poison in the first place," Cam says. "And assuming we can trust whoever Oshu puts up for this."

"Colonel Mitchell--" Teal'c begins.

"Answer's no," Cam says. "And I'm not just saying that because you'd probably _die._ Anubis knows what you look like. So I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work."

Teal'c subsides, but Dani knows he's still thinking about it. Trying to figure out a way to make it work. One of them in exchange for the galaxy? Even all of them? Not a bad deal. She'd rather it were her, though. And she'd offer in a heartbeat, except Anubis knows her even better than he knows Teal'c, so she couldn't offer to go in impersonating a _lo'tar._ She was Anubis's host once, for an hour or so she doesn't remember at all. The host is supposed to remember. But she doesn't. She's lucky—based on what Simon said—to have survived. Why is Anubis so different from the other _Goa'uld?_ Is it because he's had a _harceisis_ as a host?

"If you're done making notes, you can come down here and help me lose at cards," Cam says, so she tucks her journal back in her pack, and does.

They've been there about two hours by her watch—which means the Council's been arguing for about two hours—when Jacob comes to get them. Not to tell them anything's been decided (since it hasn't been, and from what he isn't saying, probably isn't going to be for a while) but to give them the choice of going back to the SGC (in which case he'll take them to a neutral destination they can Gate home from) or remaining as guests of the _Tok'ra_ until something's decided.

"Guess we'll stick around a while," Cam says mildly. "Hate to leave when things are just starting to get interesting."

So Jacob takes them off and shows them to a bedroom ( _Tok'ra_ don't sleep any more than _Goa'uld_ do, but the bed is big enough to hold all four of them—because _Tok'ra_ use beds for other things—and they've all slept in weirder places), and there's a bath/shower attached (she or Sammy can show Cam how it works later). They drop most of their gear there and Jacob takes them on a quick tour of the parts of _Tok'raville_ he and Ladrain are willing to show off. Teal'c gets a few wary looks from the people they pass in the corridors. They aren't all necessarily _Tok'ra_ , either—some of them are probably "future _Tok'ra_ " (as the _Tok'ra_ think of it). Sammy and Teal'c are probably the only ones who would know for sure. Well, them and Jacob, though he's unlikely to say.

By her internal clock (and her watch) it's about 2200, and it's Friday, so if they weren't here, they'd be at Cam's. Dinner would be over, and the first movie would be finishing up, and it would be time for dessert. And she'd spend the night on his couch, and on Saturday he'd drive over to the house and do his laundry. And that existence is light-years in every possible sense of the term from this, and each one makes the other seem unreal.

Jacob offers them dinner, and Sammy teases him about _Tok'ra_ food. He points out _he_ never eats it (probably he lets Ladrain do it) and Cam says they've brought their own, and Jacob says they'll probably want to get some rest, and shows them back to their quarters and (pretty much as Dani suspected) snags Sammy for "one more thing," so the rest of them go in, and she shows Cam how to work _Tok'ra_ plumbing, and explains you don't have to take your clothes off to shower, since it's all ultrasonics, not water. (Which at least means they don't need to worry about clean uniforms.)

Then she goes back out, and Teal'c's unpacking the stove, and she fills a pan with water from her canteen, and makes coffee. Cam comes out a few minutes later, looking amazed and amused and pretty cheerful (not most peoples' response to their first encounter with _Tok'ra_ plumbing, but Cam is Cam) and asks "what's for dinner?" and sorts through the MREs until he finds one he doesn't dislike as much as the others.

"Gonna run out pretty soon," he says.

She looks at him. They've got food for four days here. That's when she realizes they're going to be here, well, a while. At least, she thinks, until Thursday, because ... it will be easier to check in with Oshu from here. She's not sure what he has planned, but ... going back home doesn't seem to be involved. "You can eat _Tok'ra_ food," she says. "It just doesn't taste like anything."

He grins at her. "Coming from you, that's got me worried."

"We can hit one of the resupply caches," she offers.

If a Team is stranded offworld, and can't get back to the SGC or any of the offworld bases—because of having lost their GDOs, or the sites being in Lockdown—there are supply caches scattered around a number of uninhabited worlds. Food and medical supplies only, no weapons or technology. But the difference between life and death for an SG Team on the run.

"I'll keep that in mind," Cam says.

While they're waiting for the coffee, Cam asks her for a run-down on the _Tok'ra_. She shrugs, and says her information is years out of date (and it is; it's been almost three years since they were in regular contact) and most of the Council is new: only Per'sus and Garshaw are left from its original membership. "Jake doesn't count," she says, shrugging. "Ladrain's the one on the Council, not him." Ladrain is more standoffish than Selmak was. More of a _Tok'ra_ hardliner, apparently; Selmak was always a moderate. And they know (from bitter experience) how much the host influences the symbiote in a Blending, but there are limits. But she tells him everything she knows, and (the real point here) what she's guessed after their session today. It's what she does. Makes guesses and assumptions and flies blind, navigating by intuition. By ten years of visiting the impossible, a lifetime of strangeness that allows her to parse the rhythms of each new encounter on the basis of what's gone before. Strange, impossible, uncanny, but never entirely unique. She lives in a universe where snakes play God and the dead come back to life ( _except when it really matters_ , her mind comments) and what she has to offer is her ability to turn it all into a pattern, something with history and possibility. Cam listens intently. Her guesses, transformed by his training, might save their lives. It's the basis of their survival: none of them alone. All of them together.

"They're listening. That's a start," she says. "No matter how much trouble we're in, they're in more. And..." she pauses, as a thought—nothing new, but she doesn't think she's ever mentioned this to Cam before—strikes her. "Unlike us, the _Tok'ra_ have the slight disadvantage of being _programmed_ for this war."

Cam cocks his head, looking interested. "How you figure?"

"Egeria passed her genetic memory to them the same way any _Goa'uld_ Queen passes hers. And Egeria wanted her children to fight Ra, to fight the _Goa'uld_. They, um, don't actually have a lot of choice, I think. They have her memories. They'll do what she wants."

"Think she's on our side?" Cam asks.

"I met her once, on Pangar, just before she died. I think she would have been."

"Good to know," Cam says, nodding.

The coffee's boiling. Teal'c takes the pan off the fire so the grounds can settle out. Just then Sammy comes back in, looking unsettled. Cam asks her if there's trouble. She shakes her head without answering. Dani looks at Teal'c. Teal'c's looking bland. Okay, they all know they've decided to hide out here with the _Tok'ra_ rather than go back to the SGC. Because General Landry won't really approve of their plan? Probably. (Jack always said it was easier to get forgiveness than permission. And General Hammond always forgave them. She doesn't think General Landry's really big on forgiveness.) But forgiveness won't really matter if they can just get the _Tok'ra_ to come across with the symbiote poison and work out the rest of the plan as well. Anubis will be dead and, well, he's killed most of the rest of the _Goa'uld_. 

They're going to have to talk about it, admit what they're doing, at some point. If only to each other. But maybe not tonight.

The coffee has settled out now, and she pours. There's only powdered creamer (it's in the MREs, along with the instant coffee she ignores) and she gives Cam hers. After they eat and pack away the remains, Cam glances at his watch—looking a little surprised at the time—and says they'd better get some sleep. He glances at the doorway, obviously wondering how you close the door. Dani gets up and goes over and activates the forcefield that seals the doorway. Another touch renders it opaque. She dims the lights, but they can't actually be turned off.

"All locked in for the night?" Cam asks.

"It takes a member of the Council—or Council Security—to override the privacy screens," Sammy says. She has that sort of _listening_ expression that tells Dani she's remembering things she never actually knew, because it was Jolinar who knew them. They've all become so many other people over the years. Some by accident. Some by design.

A few minutes later they're all settled in. Cam and Teal'c on the outside edges, her and Sammy in the middle. She's between Sammy and Teal'c. 

She thinks of one of the many ways their Mission Reports have always needed to be carefully edited—although at least when they were going off to spend an extended period of time with the _Tok'ra_ on purpose, they'd at least carry sleeping bags, and whoever reviewed their reports could simply assume they'd used them. And they had, more or less, but Jack certainly wouldn't go for having them split up (because he'd never trusted the _Tok'ra_ , and, well, maybe with reason) and those bags didn't offer much padding on a stone floor, so they'd slept together, the three of them before Teal'c needed to sleep, all four of them after he did. And she'd really rather not be thinking about Jack at all, because when she does, the knowledge of her failure is too much to bear. She knows if she'd taken the download instead of him, he wouldn't have let her die. He would have found a way around Elizabeth, around the bureaucracy, around everything. (She won't listen to the inner voice that reminds her she doesn't possess the Ancient gene, that she couldn't have activated the Antarctic defenses to save Earth from Anubis. She tells herself she could have led Jack there. He could have done that part.)

But it's too late now. Too late to fix her failure. So she tries not to think about it, but it's hard here. The _Tok'ra_ are so much a part of SG-1's history: Jolinar and the ashrak, and Jacob-and-Selmak, and going to Netu, and losing Martouf-and-Lantash. The first in an escalating series of deaths. And this is the worst possible time and place for one of her white nights, because she can hardly go for a walk, can she? She can't even sit up and read, really, not without waking the others. Her teammates won't thank her for either waking them up or keeping them awake. And she needs to be alert tomorrow, in case they have to talk to the Council again. 

"Can't sleep?" Cam asks quietly.

She sighs, deeply, and doesn't bother to reply. Sammy's asleep—she can hear her breathing—and so's Teal'c. Both of them sleep like the dead. Sammy, she thinks, from so many years of noisy bunkrooms and dormitories, and Teal'c ... probably because he never slept at all until the tretonin, and anything Teal'c does, he does _thoroughly._

"I'll be okay," she whispers.

Cam reaches out—across Sammy—and cups the back of her head. She can feel the warmth of his hand through her hair. "Sure?" he asks, still quiet.

She nods, forehead pressed against the mattress, and he takes his hand away. Eventually she manages to _stop thinking_ and fall asleep. And she didn't wake anyone up. Points to her.

Morning—as much as there _is_ a morning down in the tunnels—comes too soon, and at that she's the last one up. Headache, too, but she was expecting that: it's the cousin of the one she gets when she spends too long under The Mountain; something to do with the way the air recirculates here. Maybe they can get some time on the surface today; Sammy's looking a little bruised too.

After they eat, Cam decides they should go poking around (not _exactly_ poking around, but none of them really wants to sit in here forever) and they don't get very far before Elaise/Isaine shows up again (still hopeful) wanting to know how they're finding everything, and if there's anything she can do for them. Cam gives her one of his best smiles (Dani could tell him that's a bad idea) and says they were just getting tired of cooling their heels, and wanted to stretch their legs. The combination of idioms would have baffled Teal'c completely not so many years ago, and Elaise/Isaine looks just as puzzled: Dani glosses the meaning for her.

"Oh," she says. "I will accompany you."

So they take _another_ tour of the _Tok'ra_ tunnels, and Cam asks Isaine (Isaine is the _Tok'ra_ ; Elaise is the host; Dani's finally gotten that straight) what they do for fun around here.

"Uh, Cam--" she says, but she's too late. Isaine tells him.

Martouf (or possibly Lantash) once said the _Tok'ra_ were a passionate race, and he wasn't referring to politics. The _Goa'uld_ may want to conquer the galaxy and torture and enslave billions. If the _Tok'ra_ weren't trying to stop them, they'd be spending all their time having orgies.

"Well, that sounds like a lotta fun," Cam says cheerfully, "but I'm afraid my girlfriend might get jealous. So I guess we're going to have to have fun some other way while we're here."

"Too bad," Isaine says regretfully. She looks at both of them (her and Sammy), as if trying to decide which of them is Cam's girlfriend. And good luck with that. She then regards Teal'c speculatively, as if trying to decide if she's actually perverted enough to consider having sex with a Jaffa. Teal'c announces his girlfriend is also extremely jealous. Which is true. (Ish'ta would also hand him his head for calling her his "girlfriend," once she figured out the meaning of the term.)

Sammy suggests (hopefully) that they'd really like the opportunity to exchange information about what the _Goa'uld_ are currently doing. Isaine says that is a matter that must be decided by the Council. Cam asks if they can go up to the surface for a while. Same answer. Apparently the only thing they _can_ do down here without Council approval is have sex with Isaine. So after they do a couple of laps of the tunnels, they go back to their room. Teal'c _kel'no'reems_ (sort of), Dani reads the professional journal she stuffed into her backpack at the last minute, Sammy plays Solitaire (and cheats, if Dani knows Sammy), and Cam lies on his back on the bed and pretty much does nothing at all. Around the time they're contemplating lunch, Jacob shows up. The Council is still debating, he tells them. (But at least they can all go for a walk on the surface now.)

When they get up there (and the fresh air gets rid of her headache almost instantly, for which she's duly grateful), Jacob asks her how things are going at home, how she's getting along with General Landry. It's an odd question, but she supposes he has a right to ask: General Landry is the person the _Tok'ra_ will be dealing with most directly. She tells him the truth: better than Bauer, better than Elizabeth (though according to the reports, she's doing great in Atlantis).

"You miss George, don't you?" Jacob asks.

"Of course," she says, surprised. General Hammond was her advocate. More than that, he's a friend.

"You don't think General Landry would approve this mission, do you?" Jacob asks.

She glances around, but none of the others are close enough to help her out. Cam packed a Frisbee in his gear, and he's brought it to the surface with him. He and Sammy are playing, and Teal'c's watching. "It's not a mission without the Council's cooperation," she points out. Going for tactful evasion.

"Don't try to kid a kidder, Dani," Jacob says.

She sighs, defeated. "Maybe not. I don't know." She has a good idea, though. She thinks he'd drag his heels. Try to send someone else. Try to do it some other way.

"He been giving you kids trouble?" Jacob asks.

"The Program is in an exciting transitional period during which we face many new challenges and are presented with unprecedented opportunities," she says sourly. It's a line from the memo Landry sent around when he came.

Jacob laughs, and claps her on the shoulder. "Fair enough," he says. "I'm just as glad I retired when I did. At least the _Tok'ra_ aren't that big on bureaucracy."

She makes a face but doesn't say anything. It doesn't seem like it when they're in the middle of Day Two of what looks like an interminable Council session.

"You disagree, Doctor Jackson?" Ladrain asks.

She really misses Selmak. "Of course we appreciate the _Tok'ra's_ concerns," she says. "At the same time, you will appreciate our hope the Council not only decides in our favor, but does so quickly."

Ladrain bows, acknowledging her point. "How much of the poison would you require?" he asks.

She has absolutely no idea. "Probably more than I took to the summit meeting," she says slowly. "We aren't sure exactly what Tartarus is. Or how big. We'd certainly want to be sure that everyone there..." She stops, realizing what her next words are about to be. _And when did she become someone who could calmly talk about killing a planetful of living beings? No matter who and what they are?_

"Is killed," Ladrain finishes calmly. "Yes. Of course. A small explosive device should be sufficient to disperse the poison quickly. I presume a Jaffa will carry it?" He looks at Teal'c.

She doesn't want to be having this conversation. But she thinks it's one of the reasons they're here, away from all potential eavesdroppers. "Yes. A Jaffa. Naturally Teal'c has volunteered, but he's known to Anubis. He can't do it."

"Who, then?" Ladrain asks.

"We don't know yet, but it will almost certainly be one of Yu's Jaffa. Certainly a method acceptable both to the Council and to Yu has to be arranged for the delivery of the poison. One that leaves the least possibility for its ... misuse." (For Yu to simply run off with it, they both know she means.)

"Certainly this is a problem you have already considered," Ladrain says.

"You would have to speak to Colonel Mitchell about that," Dani answers carefully. Yes, she knows as much about the plan (such as it is) as any of them do. But it isn't her place to say so.

Ladrain inclines his head—the formal gesture looks so odd, coming from Jacob Carter—and says he looks forward to speaking with Colonel Mitchell should the Council's deliberations reach a point at which it becomes desirable to do so. Then Ladrain is gone, and Jacob is back. "Kinda tough to be caught in the middle, eh, kid?" Jacob says.

"I'm guessing you'd know something about that," she answers, and he laughs.

So much for Saturday.

#

On Sunday (Council _still_ debating and they aren't invited to attend) they get permission to head offworld to hit up one of their SGC supply caches. (A complicated negotiation; they don't want to tell the _Tok'ra_ where the caches are; the _Tok'ra_ don't want to tell them where _they_ are.) They actually raid three, to avoid depleting any one of them too completely, but one of the things they bring back are a couple of sleeping bags, because the _Tok'ra_ , advanced as they are, have apparently not invented blankets. And the Orgy Bed is big enough, and the tunnels are warm enough, they don't really need them, but they're really used to sleeping _under_ something.

Cam says to look on this as a vacation. (If she'd known at the time just how much of a vacation she was going to have, she'd have brought along her chess set.) He tells her she works too hard; she tells him he's going to get tired of MREs before she will. She's reasonably sure she wins that exchange on points.

They're allowed a few hours each day on the surface (with a _Tok'ra_ minder). They play Frisbee. Even her.

On Tuesday (she's sure General Landry's wondering where the hell they are by now; too bad he has no way of contacting them) they spend an entertaining four hours with the Council repeating everything they told them on Friday. She has no idea why the _Tok'ra_ Council keeps refusing to believe in the notion that Anubis is—one—worse than any of the other _Goa'uld_ and—two—something worth doing anything to stop. This time, of course, the Council has a new idea. In a way it's a trap, and of course the four of them walk right into it.

"But surely you of all people, Dr. Jackson, are in a position to assess Anubis's capabilities accurately," Garshaw says. "You were once his host, were you not?"

"Yes." They've mentioned this, in passing, covering Anubis's attack on Earth, its aftermath, and his escape. "I don't remember anything about it." Standing in the Gate Room, the shock of pain, the blood, staring at the SFs and seeing the guns pointed at her, knowing something was wrong but not knowing what, and someone had _shot her,_ and she didn't know why...

"You know we have methods for recovering memories," Garshaw says. "Perhaps you will allow us to assist you."

And Teal'c twitches, and Sammy covers her mouth with her hand, and Cam frowns—he's never been around when the _Tok'ra_ memory-recall device was used—but Dani can't say no, it would look bad, and they need the Council's cooperation, need them to believe they're doing everything they can and that's why they're coming to the _Tok'ra_ for help. So she says "yes."

#

She doesn't like the memory-recall device. The _Tok'ra_ always say it doesn't hurt, but it does. Hurts going in, and hurts coming out. She's had it used on her twice: once by Anise, as part of the _za'tarc_ -detector, once by Hathor's people, trying to probe her memories for useful information. Neither memory is a good one. Of course Isaine is the technician. That's somehow inevitable.

None of the others will leave her side. That's reassuring in a way. There's a monitor behind her head, where she can't see it. What she remembers—her mind's eye view—will be projected there, for Ladrain and Garshaw and Per'sus to see. But what they want, most of all, is for her to remember. Because the host remembers.

She lies down on the table, remembering, at the last minute, to take off her glasses. Sammy takes them from her, holding them carefully. Isaine opens a small case. "You have used the memory recall device before, Dr. Jackson?" she asks.

"Yes." _Get on with it._

Isaine presses the device to her temple. She feels a lancing pain that makes her eyes water as it sinks in. Then Isaine activates it. The hum makes her teeth ache. "Now. Think of Anubis," Isaine says.

Abydos. The Gate Room. Herak is demanding the Eye of Ra.

"Not that," Cam says quietly, glancing up at the screen. "Alexi Vasilov."

The memory-recall device makes the memories as vivid as her reality. For someone who lives in the past, she hates remembering her own; it would be an amusing irony if she had any sense of humor left. But the memory-recall device is as compelling as a drug, so she remembers, irresistibly. Thirty months ago. She's standing in officer's quarters in the SGC. General Landry has been here for a month. A new Russian officer has just been sent to them, but SG-4—the Russian Team—is full, and she has no idea what they're going to do with him. He's asked for SG-1, and, well… maybe that would work.

_"I just wanted to come by and welcome you to the neighborhood," she tells Alexi._

They talk for a few minutes. He's upset by General Landry's reception of him. He wants to be added to SG-1, at least until Jack comes back, and having Alexi on the team would be a good thing, even if it would also be a little awkward. So she's doing her best to be diplomatic (why is he here, anyway? Is Colonel Chekov going to recall one of the Russians? Has some paperwork been lost?) when Alexi collapses. She catches him, easing him to the ground...

...and she's standing in the Gate Room, bleeding. She falls to her knees.

Isaine makes a sound of annoyance. "You must remember something," she says. "I will adjust the settings. Try again."

_"I just wanted to come by and welcome you to the neighborhood..."_

When the memory-recall device is set high enough, the memories are more real than reality. Every detail is impossibly vivid, even things she didn't see or hear consciously at the time. The faint scent of aftershave and Turkish cigarettes and cordite she smelled as Alexi collapsed into her arms. The whine of the fluorescents in the halls overhead. The click and chuff of the air circulating system, and the dank smell of the concrete.

The bullet-wound is agony, and she screams. The smell of blood is nauseating. She can hear the click of the safeties on the SFs' rifles being disengaged, and knows in another minute they will kill her. Her wrists ache from the recoil of the Beretta; she shot two members of SG-11 before she was shot. But she remembers nothing.

They try again and again and again, setting the device higher each time. It burns.

_"I just wanted to come by and welcome you to the neighborhood..."_

Every whisper is a shout. Colors flare in her sight. Every detail is etched, sharp as crystal. She knows the name of everyone she passed in the hall that day, she can read their unvoiced thoughts: _SG-1 is jinxed, now; their luck had to run out sometime..._

Alexi's skin is cold and clammy against her own. 

Then nothing.

From the moment Anubis took her to the moment he released her—ninety-four minutes—she remembers nothing.

"Stop," Cam says.

"But we can--" Isaine begins.

"I said stop. She doesn't remember anything. She told you that, and now she's proved it. I'm not letting you fry her brain just to prove a point. Take it out."

She's blind with pain. She's not sure who helps her sit up, who removes the device from her temple. Her head hurts so much she doesn't feel its removal.

The lights are so bright.

They walk her back to their room. The phantom pain of a gunshot wound years-healed makes her shoulder ache. Cam sits her down on the bed, and Sammy gives her pills to swallow and water to drink, and she lies down and eventually she sleeps.

#

She wakes up in the middle of the night. Dreaming in _Goa'uld_. Of Orlin and Aiyana. The first iteration of humanity that created the second in their image. Who built the Stargates. Who have a language with no words for "past" or "future." And some of them died of a terrible plague—like Aiyana—and some of them found a way to transcend their physical form—like Orlin. Thousands upon thousands of years ago. Orlin called it Ascension.

When you Ascend, you go to a higher realm.

Simon said: _"He burned them out—from inside—days, weeks—he'd take a new one. He flowed out like smoke. He told me he'd been to the Higher Realms and gained such power as to humble even the Asgard. He said he'd remake all Creation in his image."_

The Asgard weren't the most powerful member of the Alliance of the Four Great Races. The Ancients were. The Ancients have been gone for a very long time. The Ancients became the Ascended.

When Anubis hid in the SGC, he moved from host to host at will. None of them had entry-scars. She didn't. _"He flowed out like smoke..."_

"Oh, god," she says, sitting up. Can a _Goa'uld_ Ascend? And just what is Ascension anyway? If she'd had more time to study the library at Heliopolis, maybe she'd know.

She's sleeping next to Cam. She wriggles out of the bed, pads barefoot to the door, and hesitates. She wants to go out, but there isn't any way to shut the door from the outside. She settles for sitting down beside it. Her head still hurts, but it's a dull distant ache now. Almost bearable. The stone floor is cool against her bare feet. Soothing. After a few minutes, Cam gets up and joins her. He sits down on the floor beside her, running a hand through his hair to wake himself up. "Okay?" he asks in a half-whisper, and his voice is still rough with sleep.

"I think I know what Anubis is," she answers, and her voice shakes a little—which surprises her—and she doesn't want to be right, and she doesn't know how to find out whether she is or not.

"Remember something?" Cam asks, and his voice, still low, is sharper now. Much closer to awake.

"Yes. No. Not like that. Like... We've always known he was different." If not always, then for a long time. Since he came back out of nowhere, back from an exile so complete the System Lords had all thought he was dead, with a cache of technology that outstripped those of the other _Goa'uld_ , and began doing things he shouldn't even have been able to _think_ of, because one thing genetic memory does for a race is discourage creativity. If something's worked for twenty-five thousand years, why try something new? 

You don't. 

Except Anubis is.

"Yeah," Cam says.

"Mentally. Physically. He told Simon—he told Osiris—he'd been to the Higher Realms. Cam, there's no _naquaadah_ in my blood. Or in anybody's at the SGC he took over while he was there. He ... I think he might be like Orlin." She knows Cam will know who Orlin is.

"Okay, that sucks," Cam says comprehensively. He leans his head back against the wall and sighs. "How'd that happen?"

"I have no idea. I don't even know if I'm right."

Cam sighs again. "Yeah, well, it'd explain a few things, wouldn't it?"

"Unfortunately," she agrees. Like how he survived his _ha'tak_ blowing up. Like where his new ship design came from, and all the rest of his new technology. Like why he doesn't need—or can't use—a sarcophagus any more. Aiyana was almost genetically-identical to modern humans. Almost. And she'd survived five million years of entombment in Antarctic ice. Five million years ago there was life on Earth, certainly. But not people like Aiyana. Except there were, because she was. And the things she did—then—were the things... The things Jack did, later. Just before the end. When the Ancient device had almost completely changed him. Turning him into an Ancient. It couldn't do that—so the theory goes—unless they're related to the Ancients. And they are. Humans are. They share enough genetic material so at least some of them can make Ancient technology function. They're descended from the Ancients. Somehow. "It doesn't make sense, though," she says, frowning. "Orlin started out as energy. Then he created an entirely physical body for himself. Then it was killed, and he became energy again. If that was what Anubis was, is, he wouldn't need to keep taking hosts."

"Want me to wake up Sam?" Cam asks.

"Sam's awake," comes a voice from the bed. Dani hears a groan, and the rustle of the sleeping bag, then Sammy flops over the end of the bed and stares at them. "What?"

"What do you remember about Orlin?" Cam asks.

"You woke me up for that?" Sammy demands.

"0400. Start of a bright shiny new day," Cam says remorselessly. "Dani thinks Anubis is an Ascended."

"Holy crap," Sammy says. She sits up. "He can't be."

"How you figure?" Cam asks.

Sammy slides off the bed and joins them. She runs a hand through her hair and yawns. "The Ascended have rules about interfering on the, um, mortal plane. That was why Orlin was exiled to Velona. He'd shared Ascended technology with the Velonans."

"So ... kind of like the Tollan," Cam says. "Sorry."

Sammy winces. They haven't heard from the Tollan in almost five years, since Tanith attacked and destroyed their planet. One of the earliest gambits in Anubis's war, though they didn't know it at the time. "Yeah, pretty much," she says.

"But they didn't stop Orlin from building a Stargate in your basement," Dani says. Sammy shrugs. True enough.

"So you think maybe Anubis used to be Ascended and came back and that's why he's kinda weird now?" Cam asks.

"Maybe," Dani says cautiously. "We haven't really seen him do anything that couldn't be accounted for by really advanced technology. Like that phase-shifting device we picked up on P48-782. Something like that would let him jump hosts undetectably."

"If it was small enough, sure," Cam says, nodding.

"And we know _Goa'uld_ don't have to incorporate _naquaadah_ in their physical makeup," Sammy says. "The ones Immunitech was cloning out in Oregon didn't."

It's information, but—as so often seems to be the case lately—it doesn't _go_ anywhere. And that hurts like a death, because once (too long ago), information was an end in itself, and now it seems she only wants to know things so she can _use_ them. She folds her arms around her knees and rests her forehead on her knees and wonders if there can ever be a time when she can become that other person again. And she's afraid the answer is "no."

Sammy reaches out and strokes her hair. "Think you can go back to sleep?" she asks.

"No," Dani mutters. She closes her eyes and sees the Gate Room. Closes her eyes and smells the blood. Her head hurts. Her shoulder hurts. The scar is small and white and knotted now. Barely visible; Sally did a good job. "Sorry," she says.

"Worth knowing," Cam says. Even if she's just guessing.

"We can send a query to Atlantis," Sammy says. "See if they've found any new information there."

Pegasus—for reasons they don't understand—is filled with Ancient artifacts. Is it the home galaxy of the Ancients? Or is it where they went? No one knows. Whatever they ask the Atlantis Mission, it will take three months to get an answer. They may not have that long. She nods, not speaking. _Did_ the Ancients—the Ascended—create humanity in their image? If they did, how? If they did, does the mechanism—if they used a mechanism—still exist? If it does, does Anubis know where it is? He can't. He would have used it by now.

"Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I want coffee," Cam says.

Later that day, they're called before the Council again. It's reached a decision. Presuming an acceptable delivery method can be found which satisfies the Council's need for security, they have decided to grant SG-1's petition to be provided with a suitable amount of the symbiote poison.

"Thank you," Cam says. "Now, I don't want to be pushy, but how soon can we get our hands on the goods?"

Per'sus fusses and hems and haws. But he finally admits it will take them several days to create. Today is Wednesday. Four days, perhaps, Per'sus says. Maybe five. So Monday. Maybe.

On Thursday (and by now all of them—except maybe Teal'c—are going quietly mad from boredom) they go to make their check-in with Oshu. And if he isn't there, this may all be for nothing, because she doesn't know about Cam or Sammy, but she trusts Yu about as far as she can _throw_ him. She doesn't trust Oshu either, but at least he isn't _crazy._

Making the check-in is a little awkward. They manage. The _Tok'ra_ don't entirely trust them, and as for them, well, they don't really want to let the _Tok'ra_ know the address of the planet they're dialing. They didn't tell the _Tok'ra_ exactly what time their check-in was, either, giving themselves a little extra time alone on the surface. They don't know they're being spied on in the tunnels, but ... they don't know they aren't. So they have enough Alone Time to work out a plan. They know the _Tok'ra_ have ships, and the _Tok'ra_ will probably loan them one (since they'll almost certainly want to send an observer; that's the way they think). That being the case, they'll all meet Yu's designated emissary at a predetermined (outer space) location. He'll come, accompanied by Oshu, in a _tel'tak_. They'll hand over the poison, and follow him as close to Tartarus as they dare. Close enough, certainly, to see if he reneges on the deal. And to scan Tartarus, afterward, for signs of life.

All they need for this plan to work is for the _Tok'ra_ to agree to their side of it, for Oshu to agree to his side of it ... and for Oshu to be there when they dial in to talk to him. That's the kicker, because without him the whole thing falls apart. So she's nervous when she dials (so much is riding on this), and only lets go of a long-held breath when Oshu answers her radio signal.

"We have obtained the weapon," she says. "Now we must discuss its delivery."

"Agreed," Oshu answers.

"Has the Jade Emperor determined who will have the honor of striking this blow against the Abomination?" she asks. She'd actually bet even money Yu is only marginally-involved in this plan, but the niceties must be observed.

"He has," Oshu answers.

"I would be surprised to learn the Abomination would permit a _ha'tak_ to approach Tartarus without reprisal," she says.

"So my master believes," Oshu answers. "His emissary will enter the system in a _tel'tak_."

She exchanges a glance with Teal'c. They've guessed right so far.

"We shall require confirmation of its location," Oshu says.

"We will provide that when we rendezvous with you," she answers. "We will bring the weapon. You will come, so we know there has been no unfortunate misunderstanding. We will scan your _tel'tak_. If there are more than two life-signs aboard, we will leave."

"There will not be," Oshu answers. "When and where shall we meet?"

Sammy worked out the coordinates with Teal'c. The numbers mean something to him and to Sammy—and presumably, to Oshu—but they're meaningless to Dani. She recites them carefully. "In six days," she adds. They'll be there in five. Waiting.

"In six days, Doctor Jackson," Oshu says. The radio goes dead; Oshu has closed the channel. She shuts down her own. The Event Horizon collapses.

"Now all we gotta do is sell it to the Council," Cam says, staring up at the sky.

That takes them a while too, but it's a good plan, as safe as it can possibly be—short of one of them, or one of the _Tok'ra_ , delivering the poison in person, and they'd never succeed. Only one of Yu's Jaffa, coming to bring a formal petition of Lord Yu's surrender, can possibly get into Tartarus. So the Council fusses and complains, but they can't come up with any better idea. The _tel'tak_ they send will be heavily armed and heavily-cloaked. The best they have. And while Teal'c is perfectly capable of flying it, they'll send (as Cam and Dani guessed) a _Tok'ra_ observer.

Jacob/Ladrain. (Surprise.)

The rest of the time before they leave is spent tinking with the delivery system. At the summit, all she would have had to do was crush the two vials in her hand to mix the poison. The mixture is volatile and easily-dispersed. With so much more of it this time, they're going to use a small explosive charge. It will shatter the bottles and achieve the same result. Dani wonders if it makes the _Tok'ra_ nervous to be working with a poison that could kill them all in a matter of seconds. She knows it's not so different than what some people do on Earth, but the _Tok'ra_ have a much greater need to survive. And there are much fewer of them.

There's a conversation she does/doesn't want to have with Cam. And not (for a change) about something personal. No, this time it's about work. Usually, when SG-1 mutinies, she knows about it in advance, and knows _why._ Not this time. And she's pretty sure this counts as a mutiny, because—last Friday—they were just supposed to go _talk_ to the _Tok'ra_ Council. There-and-back. Home for dinner. And it's a week-and-a-half later, and they aren't back. Haven't even checked in.

She knows—pretty much—why they're here and running dark. Because Cam thinks General Landry wouldn't have given them the go-ahead for the mission. And that's stupid (of General Landry) but she thinks—she's pretty sure—that Cam's right. So (technically) she _does_ know why they've mutinied this time. It's not like they haven't done this before. Even with Cam in charge, because when they went to Kelowna to do their damnedest to evacuate it before the planet blew up, they really hadn't been supposed to up and vanish for two weeks. (They probably hadn't been supposed to overthrow the government, either, but nobody's really complaining about that part at this point.) And (if you're counting general insurrections) she's actually got one more to her credit than the rest of them, because she's the one who sent the Tollan off with the Nox all those years ago, because she was the only one of the lot of them who couldn't be court-martialed. And Cam knows that, because he's read the mission files, so he can't really think she'd _mind._ What she can't figure out is why they aren't talking about it. Cam almost always wants to talk about everything. If he doesn't think he can trust her...

That would hurt. Because _she_ trusts _him_. And she doesn't—quite—think it's that. Which means she's back to not quite knowing what the hell she's doing here. Except that she's getting quite a lot of time to think (since there's damned little else to do) and she remembers that the first time SG-1 mutinied General Hammond's hands were tied because Kinsey had been stirring shit in Washington and if they didn't go through the Gate Apophis would have destroyed the Earth, and the second time they mutinied they'd all been driven crazy by the Atanik armbands and that was all Anise's fault anyway and neither occasion had really involved anything much like the lying they're doing to General Landry now because they can't trust him to do the right thing when nobody's stopping him from doing it. And that scares her. Because if it's true, Cam _has_ to know it better than she does, and if it's true, what are they going to do?

She doesn't have an answer.

The poison and the delivery system are ready on Monday. On Tuesday they pack up their gear and Gate through with Jacob to Yet Another Secret _Tok'ra_ Location. The air there is thick, and burns her lungs. It reeks of sulfur. All of them (except Jacob) are coughing by the time they stagger aboard the _tel'tak_.

"Warn a guy next time," Cam says, gasping. He's leaning against the bulkhead by the airlock, hands on his knees.

"Dad!" Sammy wails.

She doesn't say anything. She's coughing too hard.

"Sorry, sorry," Jacob says. "You kids all right? Teal'c?"

"I will be well, Jacob Carter," Teal'c says. He doesn't sound thrilled, though.

"The atmospheric contaminants interfere with scanners," Jacob says. He still sounds apologetic.

"I just bet," Sammy says darkly in between gasps for air.

"Cuts down on the tourists, too," Cam adds, wheezing. But the air inside the ship is pure, and after a few minutes, they're all breathing easier. Jacob takes off, with Teal'c sitting second seat and Cam watching over their shoulders, fascinated.

And they jump to the coordinates where they need to be, and settle down to wait. Nobody's there yet. Or if they are, they have better cloaks than the _Tok'ra_ have scanners, and the only ones they know of who do are Anubis's people. And if Anubis were waiting for them, they'd be dead already. So they're almost certainly alone.

They've done a lot of waiting already—eleven days of it—but this is different. In a little over twenty-four hours (if all goes according to plan—and it almost never does, but they can hope) they'll get rid of Anubis, Ereshkigal, the Kull Warriors. And it's not that the galaxy will be _safe_ then, exactly (depending on who else is on Tartarus when it's hit) but safer. Back to business as usual. And then they can go home, and see whether they're going to be shot, or get medals (she actually has a few) or if Landry's just going to ignore the whole thing. She checks her watch, and is surprised at the date. Middle of October already. How time flies when you're having fun.

None of them has much to say by this point. It's either going to work or it won't. Oshu will either double-cross them or he won't. If he tries, they'll fight their way out or they won't. She ran out of chocolate and good coffee days ago. She's down to the horrible weak instant in the MREs, but at least it's something. She plays chess in her head, and wonders if they've gotten an early snowfall back home. Sometimes it snows in October. If she'd known she was going to be gone this long, she'd have cleaned out her refrigerator before she left. Cam's is probably much worse. He keeps perishables. She wonders if he'll ever get over the habit.

She wonders if Cassie is going to come home for Thanksgiving. If they'll be on-world this year.

Jacob plays poker with them. She sacrifices the back pages of her journal to keep a tally of bets and scores. She always loses early, and Sammy can't bluff (except, oddly, when she's drunk), but Teal'c, Cam, and Jacob get into a death-match at something called Texas Hold'em. Jacob wins. She's not really sure how they're going to manage to settle up. But it passes the time.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SG Team killed by a bunch of Jaffa who hunt them down for fun. Selmak (but not Jake Carter) is dead. Aside from that, it's pretty quiet.


	11. OCTOBER 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 comes back from a long (unauthorized) field trip. Anubis is (probably) still not dead. General Landry makes a phone call to Washington; General Hammond rides to the rescue. SG-1 finds Anubis's secret lab and brings home lots of souvenirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings in endnotes.

She's awakened from sleep by Jacob announcing a ship has just appeared at the rendezvous point. She fumbles for her glasses, checks her watch. If it's Oshu, he's hours early. Not really surprising. "Who's on board?" Cam asks.

"If I scan them, their sensors will pick it up," Jacob says.

"Gotta do it sometime," Cam says.

Jacob sighs. "Let's get ready to run, just in case." They all crowd around the controls as Jacob scans the other ship. "Only one life-sign," he says after a moment. "Not that it means anything," he adds darkly.

There are ways to fool scanners. Jaffa can place themselves into a near-death trance, slowing their metabolism so far it's difficult to detect. The only thing in their favor is, if that's what's going on this time, it takes them several minutes to rouse themselves from such a deep coma. So long as Jacob keeps scanning for life-signs, they should have some warning. She scrambles into her boots, jacket, tac-vest. She really hates having to save the world before she's had her morning coffee, but even if there's time to get her gear in order, there really isn't time for that. It's amazing how many places boots can get to in a small space like a _tel'tak_. But they're all fully-dressed and ready to go in less than ten minutes.

"Let's hail them," Cam says. "You're on," he tells her.

_< "Identify yourself or be destroyed,">_ she says. Safer to use _Goa'uld_. They don't know who might be listening. And in _Goa'uld_ , that sentence is the equivalent of a polite "hello." The _Goa'uld_ aren't big on social niceties.

"Oshu, First Prime to the Jade Emperor, the Exalted Lord Yu Huang Shang Ti. I greet you, Doctor Jackson. Are you prepared to proceed?" 

She glances from Cam to Jacob in puzzlement. Only one life-sign? Cam makes a circling motion with his hand. _Go on._ "We are," she says. "Drop your shields, and we will ring aboard."

"Acknowledged."

"He's dropping his shields now," Jacob says. "Still no other life signs."

"He's gotta know we're scanning him," Cam says.

Teal'c just looks grim. He doesn't want to suggest Oshu's out to betray them if he can, so he isn't going to say anything at all.

Sammy picks up the case with the poison and the delivery system and hands it to Dani. It's worse than carrying a live grenade, but Sammy and Cam both need their hands free for their weapons. Just in case. They walk back to the rings. The rings slide up, the rings slide down, and it looks as if they haven't gone anywhere, except for the fact Oshu is standing in the doorway. "The prudent warrior is always cautious," he says.

"And not that I think it's going to come up in the conversation, but our ship out there is all set to blow this one to hell at the first sign of trouble," Cam says, and Oshu nods. Cam keys his radio. "General Carter? Everything's okay so far."

"Make sure it stays that way," Jacob replies.

Dani looks around, still looking for the envoy Yu is sending to Anubis, even though there's only one life-sign on this ship and she's looking at it. And she realizes what she should have known all along. Who else would Yu send to negotiate his surrender but his First Prime? Oshu will die in agony for a god she knows is a lie. And she's going to let him. She's going to _help_ him.

"We'll need access to your navigational computer in order to give you the coordinates for Tartarus," Sammy says. Oshu inclines his head.

Once that's done—it matches coordinates he already had; apparently Yu thought he knew where Tartarus was but wasn't quite certain—they prepare to turn Oshu into a living bomb.

The belt has a failsafe. Per'sus insisted. Once it's locked into place, it can't be removed without detonating the charge. Any attempt to remove it, or tamper with it, will simply disperse the poison. Sammy explains this carefully to Oshu, who simply looks pleased.

"Should I be slain upon my arrival, undoubtedly the Abomination will wish to know more of this device I carry. And he will destroy himself. A worthy stratagem."

"You'll die very quickly," Dani says quietly. "The farther inside you are, the better. But... I don't think it will really matter."

"I understand," Oshu says. "This will be a good death."

No death is good. No death is ever good. You're supposed to fight and kick and scream all the way there, sell yourself as dearly as you can. Not walk up to it with open arms. Not die for something wrong, thinking it's right. But Sammy finishes scanning his _tel'tak_ for _Goa'uld_ traps and Cam runs down the plan—they'll shadow him in as close to Tartarus as they dare, and scan the system for life-signs after it's over.

"My master will come to see for himself," Oshu says. It's as much of a warning as they're going to get.

They ring back to Jacob's ship and step out of the rings. "He's moving off," Jacob says over the intercom. "We're following."

Cam heads up to the control room and Sammy follows. Dani stands where she is, breathing slowly and carefully. There's a hot hard weight in her chest that feels as if it could be tears, and it feels like treason. Because how can she cry for Oshu, loyal servant of a _Goa'uld_ , when there are so many others she's never cried for? She _knew._ She knew all along it would be him. Who else would Yu send to discuss his surrender but his First Prime? His most trusted servant? She just wouldn't admit it to herself, when the two of them stood in that room in the SGC and lightly talked of murder. And Oshu knew, too. He must have. He knew Yu would send him. And he went willingly. Gladly. Joyfully. Believing his death would gain him admission to Paradise.

Oh, god, she wishes she believed in a Paradise, so he could go there.

"Someday," Teal'c says softly, watching her face, "all Jaffa will be free."

Too late for Oshu. Too late for all the other Jaffa who will have to die before the _Goa'uld_ are defeated. Too late for all the Jaffa who have already died, and she's killed her fair share of them.

She nods, and follows the others to the front of the ship to watch the endgame play out.

#

They wait beyond the far limit of sensor range for four hours, then ghost into the system, cloaked. No signs of life.

"Okay, I'm gonna go down there and check things out," Cam says.

"You think that's the brightest idea you ever had, son?" Jacob asks.

Cam grins at him. "Probably not. But it seems a real shame to come all this way and not take a look around. This stuff's supposed to disperse pretty quickly, right?"

"Once it combines it's designed to disperse in a couple of hours," Jacob says. "May I remind you that Oshu said Yu intended to come and make sure it had worked?"

"We won't be long," Cam says.

Only the three of them go. Not Teal'c. Just in case. Jacob seals the aft compartment before he rings them down, and they take one of the _Tok'ra_ scanners with them. It will be able to tell them if there's any of the poison left in the air.

Tartarus is enormous.

Anubis must have built it himself—and recently—because it doesn't really look anything like a _Goa'uld_ palace at all. Everything is on a cyclopean scale, and nothing looks really...Egyptian.

There are bodies everywhere.

Some look human—Anubis's _Goa'uld_ courtiers. There are a few Jaffa. They find the Queen in her spawning tank. Dead. Vats of _prim'ta_. Also dead.

An enormous amphitheater, filled with thousands of Kull warriors. All dead.

A throne room. Oshu lies dead at the foot of the throne, surrounded by _Goa'uld_ and Jaffa. Unless Anubis has changed his costume, none of them is him.

Sammy takes readings of the air at intervals; the poison has dispersed. Good, since it means they won't accidentally kill Jacob/Ladrain when they go back to the _tel'tak_. Bad, since it means anyone who somehow escaped the initial contamination will still be a threat. Dani films everything she can, with a vague feeling that someone, somewhere, will want _proof_. 

They don't have time to search the entire place. They can only hope Anubis was here (somewhere), but even if he wasn't, his Queen is dead, and what looks like at least most of his army of Kull Warriors. Before they leave, Sammy finds the shield generators and sets them to overload. Even if Anubis has survived, he won't be using Tartarus again.

They return to the ship. "Everything okay down there?" Jacob asks.

"Everyone's dead," Cam says. Which has to be their definition of "okay."

"Then let's get out of here," Jacob says.

He doesn't take them back to the _Tok'ra_ , which wouldn't surprise Dani if she'd thought about it (she's finally gotten coffee, but not much and not good). He takes them to a neutral planet with a Stargate. They can get home from there.

"Unless you want to join the _Tok'ra_?" he asks.

"Think we'll pass," Cam says easily.

It's Wednesday, and they've been gone almost two weeks when she dials home and Cam sends their IDC. They walk through the Gate, and there's an Armed Response Team waiting for them. They look at each other. She glances up—at the Control Room—but General Landry isn't there, and neither is Walter. She looks at her watch. 2300. They'd tried to stay on Colorado time while they were gone (because the _Tok'ra_ don't care one way or the other, really, since they don't sleep in the first place) but it's easy to slip in a place without either night or day. And today's been a long one.

The Night Duty Officer is Colonel Sanchez. He doesn't look happy, but he has standing orders. When they came back— _if_ they came back—they were to be confined to Base. Cam smiles at him—easy, friendly, as if they haven't just saved the world (again) and come home to be put under arrest—and says they don't mind a bit. They're just hoping for a chance to grab a shower and some coffee and clean clothes and maybe a bite to eat. And Sanchez relaxes, and tells the Gate Room Team to stand down, and they all go off to Medical. Just like any other mission, except they can't leave afterward.

She suspects they're supposed to have SFs tagging along after them, but they don't. And Taddy's just finishing up the swing-shift, but he stays to check them in, scolding them all, and they get coffee and doughnuts with their physicals, and then they go to the Commissary for something a little more lasting (still no SFs), and then she goes to her office and scours it for spare change, and hits up the candy machines upstairs (not really supposed to go there—now or ever, really—but...chocolate) and comes back down to her office and makes notes on her report (uploading the footage from her camcorder into the mainframe and tagging it) and by then it's 0300 and she figures the rest of it can wait.

So she goes to her on-Base quarters. (Real bed. Real sheets.) And four hours later she's jarred out of a sound sleep by the phone. She drags it to her ear and it's Graham. General Landry's heard they're back and he wants to see them. Now.

"Now?" she asks plaintively, because she feels as if she's _just gotten to sleep._ And Graham says, "I'm afraid so, Dr. Jackson." And there's somebody knocking on her door, so she gets up to answer it—she always sleeps in sweats on-Base, because there's always the chance they might have to evacuate in the middle of the night—and it's Cam (bright and shiny and dressed and wide awake), and he's holding a cup of coffee and a pastry, and she takes the coffee and walks back inside. He follows her in and pulls out the uniform of the day for her while she gulps coffee and brushes her teeth (shuddering at the combination of flavors, but she needs the caffeine immediately). She wolfs down the pastry as they head for the Conference Room. He tells her Colonel Sanchez notified General Landry as soon as they got back—standing orders—and General Landry got here about half an hour ago. Cam doesn't (thank god) expect any conversation from her. She's barely awake, and he knows it.

The two of them are the last to arrive in the Briefing Room. She heads for the coffee before sitting down. General Landry glares at her, and she has no idea why. She isn't even supposed to be at her _desk_ for another forty minutes. "Nice of you to join us," General Landry says, and Cam says: "Sir." General Landry asks if they wouldn't mind telling him where they've been for the last two weeks. If it wouldn't be too much trouble.

Cam starts at the beginning. When Oshu came. And General Landry interrupts him, saying he knows that part, so Cam starts again with when General Carter came, and says they went back with Jacob/Ladrain to the _Tok'ra_ to negotiate for the use of the symbiote poison. Having obtained the poison— And General Landry interrupts him _again,_ saying they'd tried to contact Oshu last Thursday, and he hadn't responded. "Sir," Cam says. He sounds polite, helpful, and not like anyone who intends to tell General Landry the reason Oshu hadn't responded was because General Landry hadn't had the right Gate address. She gets up to get another cup of coffee.

"Sit down, Dr. Jackson," General Landry snaps.

She blinks at him in vague astonishment. It's 0715 in the morning and she's had four hours sleep. How does he expect her to get through this debriefing without coffee? Obviously he doesn't care. She sits down. When it becomes obvious that nobody's going to explain why General Landry couldn't reach Oshu, he tells Cam to continue. And Cam says they rendezvoused with Oshu and handed over the poison. Followed him to Tartarus. Confirmed the kills. Came home.

"And in all that time—nearly two weeks—not one of you thought to check in with the SGC for orders? Colonel Carter?"

"We were very busy, sir," Sammy says. Sammy sounds like she's about twelve. A mentally-deficient twelve.

"Dr. Jackson?"

"General?" she echoes blankly. Why the hell would _she_ check in for orders? It's not her job just to begin with. And what would she do if she got any? It's not as if she can order Cam or Sammy to do something they don't really want to. All she can do is refuse to do something _she_ doesn't really want to do. That's the way it works. He should know that by now.

There's another of those awkward silences.

"Do I assume then that Anubis is dead?" General Landry finally says.

"We did not have the opportunity to identify the body of Anubis during the limited time available to us for our reconnaissance of Tartarus. Sir," Cam says.

General Landry looks as if he's about to have a seizure. "And why is that, Colonel Mitchell?"

"Oshu had informed us Yu would be entering the system in force, to determine whether his plan had succeeded. Sir," Cam answers. And that's not—exactly—the question General Landry asked, is it?

She wishes General Hammond were here. She'd tell General Hammond about her new theory. She's afraid Anubis isn't dead, that they didn't find a body for the same reason blowing up his _ha'tak_ over Antarctica didn't kill him. He's probably using some kind of adapted Ancient technology to hide himself in a parallel dimension, and they won't know—for sure—until he surfaces again. And if she mentions that to General Landry, he'll only yell at her, wanting to know why she didn't tell him sooner, why they attacked Tartarus at all if it wouldn't let them take out Anubis. Despite the fact destroying Tartarus killed Ereshkigal and thousands of Kull Warriors and gives them a breathing space—if nothing else. She reminds herself to go over the possibility of Anubis's survival and what it means with Cam later.

General Landry isn't through with them. He goes on about "neglecting their duties" (but destroying the _Goa'uld_ is their most important duty) and "improper procedures" (and when has anyone—ever—in the SGC followed proper ones? They've made them up as they went along for ten years) and "appropriate behavior from officers of the United States Air Force" (though she isn't one, and neither is Teal'c) and "setting standards for our offworld allies" (and she really can't figure out what he means by that at all, because it's not as if the Asgard or the _Tok'ra_ or the Free Jaffa are going to start behaving like the US Military any time soon). 

What it boils down to is that he's mad at them, which isn't fair. They did their jobs. They have, in fact, been on the job 24/7 for the last thirteen days. And he finishes up by saying that he "expected better from you, Colonel Mitchell." And Cam says, "Sir," in that same even tone. As if he isn't really here at all.

And General Landry gets up and they all stand and he walks out of the room with Graham trailing him. She feels sorry for Graham. He has to spend all of every day around General Landry.

"So," Cam says cheerfully, looking at the three of them and clapping his hands together. "Who wants breakfast?"

#

It's been a bit over two and a half years now since President Hayes took him off the Mountain. The idea—then—had been to put a civilian face on things, in preparation for taking the Program public. (Worst damned possible time to do it too, something George Hammond would never say out loud. But on his white nights, he has to wonder if that isn't what cost Jack his life. It can't be, of course—Jack died because a piece of alien technology failed, because they couldn't get him out of it before it did—but midnight soul-searching is a matter of _"ought"_ , not _"could"_.) Dr. Elizabeth Weir was chosen as his replacement, though of course (at the time), Henry's Vice-President, Robert Kinsey, had expected her to be his hatchet-man in shutting the Program down. With one thing and another, Dr. Weir's tenure as head of the SGC had been brief. She'd gone on first to supervise the research at the Antarctic Outpost and then to head up the Pegasus Mission. By then, Homeworld Security (his new post) was an ever-growing can of worms, a vital counterweight to the International Oversight Authority, as well being needed to coordinate the increasing number of black-budget operations that had come out of the Stargate Program. And despite the fact more people knew about the Stargate than ever before, President Hayes had decided it would be better to keep the Program and its ancillary operations under wraps for the foreseeable future.

That meant the SGC needed a military commander once again. The ideal solution would have been to promote from within, pull someone off one of the Teams, slap General's stars on him and hope for the best. But there was nobody available at the SGC with enough time in grade or with the particular collection of strengths and talents needed to command a wildcard like the SGC. President Hayes had asked him for his recommendations, and after a great deal of soul-searching, George came up with three names. One of them couldn't pass the physical. One was needed elsewhere. And the third was Hank Landry. An old friend of Jack O'Neill's from years ago—not that it had any influence on George's decision, one way or another. Though it made him wish—neither for the first nor the last time—Jack's last mission hadn't gone so wrong. He wouldn't have wanted the job, but he'd have taken it.

But Landry seemed to do well enough. The learning curve was brutal (but when wasn't it?), starting out with a _Goa'uld_ invasion of the SGC, losing Dr. Jackson for six weeks during a civil war on Tegalus, problems with the Trust. And SG-1 had its own problems. First the death of its new commander, then being unable to settle in with a new teammate. They'd seemed to get through all of it. And—later—George sent them Cameron Mitchell, and the boy is still on SG-1 eighteen months later. He hopes none of them were too hard on young Mitchell back in the beginning. An SG Team is like a family, and SG-1 was closer than most.

He'd been privileged—he knows—to be allowed into their charmed circle. Dr. Jackson sends him Christmas cards and still remembers his birthday; that means a lot, coming from her (since he sometimes suspects she doesn't remember where she lives half the time, bless the child). So does Samantha (she was "Jake's girl" to him long before she was Captain-Major-Colonel Carter; something he never breathed a hint of in the workplace. But the Air Force, at their level, his and Jake's, is a very small club. And he met her—met all of them—for the first time long before he even knew Jacob Carter; a secret he carried with him for years). But the reports out of the Mountain have been encouraging. And the successes speak for themselves. So he really isn't expecting the phone call he gets.

It's Hank Landry. Well, he calls now and again. Covering a few things it would be better not to put on paper. Like that business a couple of weeks ago when Yu's First Prime walked into the SGC and calmly told them the United States Government was riddled with _Goa'uld_ spies. They're still cleaning up after that one, but apparently Dr. Jackson was right: they were ordered to commit suicide, and they did. But today Hank sounds fit to be tied. He's making noises about "insurrection" and "gross disrespect" and "willful disobedience," and when he slows down a little George realizes he's talking about SG-1, and that's when he starts to worry. Because George knows he always had their respect, even when they were ignoring his orders. And finally Hank slows down enough to take a breath and says, "George, how the _hell_ did you deal with these people?"

"What's wrong?" he asks, because he can't give the man advice without knowing what the actual problem is. Half the time (or so he's found in a career that's probably gone on longer than it really should, but he's needed, or so he tells himself), it turns out not to be a problem at all if you look at it right. But that just winds Hank up again. Just as well, as George needs time to think, especially while he's reading between the lines. It's a fact of life that nobody ever puts the truth on paper. The Good Lord knows he never did. And Hank has apparently followed that fine old tradition, because for the last four months, his command has been going to hell in a handbasket without a peep out of him about it to anyone up the line. And the icing on the cake—to hear Hank tell it—is two weeks ago (just after Yu's First Prime showed up, and there wasn't a word about any of this in the Weekly Report) SG-1 up and took off without a word. Technically, they were supposed to go and present a request to the _Tok'ra_ Council, something that would take a couple of hours. They came back two weeks later (today), having gone off completely on their own, having conspired (Hank's word) with Yu to attack Anubis.

"Well, did it work?" George asks.

"That's not the point!" Hank sputters. "This isn't the first time they've done something like this!"

_No, it isn't,_ George thinks to himself. But he lets Hank wind himself down for a few minutes more, hearing about SG-1 overthrowing alien governments, and offering asylum to alien nationals, and overruling his decisions about who is and who isn't to be members of the Teams (figuring that one out will take more energy than George has right now), and as he keeps going, it keeps sounding worse. "What the hell did you _do to them_?" George finally says in bewilderment. "No, strike that. Let me put it this way: how'd you piss off SG-1?"

And Hank stops as if George has smacked him across the face, and says: "They do not get to be 'pissed off'. I'm in command here."

George closes his eyes. When someone says something like that, it's time to duck and cover. Yes, he's sure they've all (not just SG-1, always his problem children, but all the Teams) been running Hank ragged. Not standing to attention, not getting their reports in on time, and probably out of uniform to boot. The Gate Teams are (to put it charitably) eccentric—when they aren't crazy as loons. But they get the job done. A job that destroys minds, bodies, and souls. And because of that, you look the other way as much as you can. And cover up everything you possibly can. You don't call them on the carpet. He tries to make the point as gently as he can. The SGC is a War Zone, and in a War Zone you make allowances. The Teams have always been allowed wide discretionary powers in getting the job done. (SG-1 in particular, though he doesn't say so).

And Hank isn't listening—though to be perfectly accurate, what he isn't doing is _hearing._ George suspects his people (not his people any more, not really, but in another sense, they always will be; he built that command from bare walls) tried talking to Hank first, and Hank wasn't listening then, either. Hank talks about "efficiency" and "new brooms" and "streamlining the command." He talks about Jack O'Neill, saying apparently the Teams have canonized the man (God Rest Him), and George knows Jack was a good friend of his—of both of theirs—but Jack was a line officer and he never wanted to be anything more. He never had any notion of what was really needed in the way of operational procedures to keep a place like the SGC running (Hank says), and Hank's been doing his best to root out his influence ever since he took over (forgetting, just for the moment, that Jack O'Neill was George's 2IC for seven years, and it's not as if George didn't know every damned thing he wanted to know about what went on in his command), and for a while Hank thought he was getting somewhere. But in the last four months, things have started going straight to Hell. (George is trying to cast his mind back to July, and what could have happened then, but nothing comes to mind. And Hank is on a roll).

At first (Hank says) he'd hoped Mitchell would pull SG-1 into line. But that's obviously not going to happen. After this last fiasco, he's just about made up his mind. He'll reassign all of them. Start fresh.

"For the love of God!" George says. "Are you out of your mind?"

Silence from the other end of the line. "It _is_ my command," Hank says. He sounds miffed.

_And they're your first line of defense._ George doesn't even want to think about what Hank's idea of "reassignment" might be. A desk job for Dr. Jackson, certainly. Maybe Area 51 for Samantha; they've been making noises about wanting to get their hands on her for years. Teal'c? Hard to say. He came to the SGC for Jack; George is pretty sure he's stayed for Dr. Jackson. Teal'c could go either way. But what he _does_ know is that SG-1 (back in the day) was lightning in a bottle. The four of them—together—could pull off miracles no other team could match. Hank has no idea how lucky he is they can still do it with Mitchell. He knew the boy was special, all those hours sitting at his bedside. He just hadn't realized how special until the reports had started coming out of the Mountain that Flagship was back in harness again.

"Look," he says. "Why don't I come on out there? I'll take a look around. We'll see if we can fix this." It's phrased as a suggestion, but he has one more star than Hank Landry and they both know it. There's a bit of a hesitation, but Hank is an old Pentagon gameplayer. He actually manages to sound sincere when he tells George he'd really appreciate a set of fresh eyes on the problem. Someone who can identify the ringleaders. 

George already knows who the ringleaders are. What he wants to know is "why."

#

After breakfast (and after two weeks of MREs, even Cam went back for seconds on the Commissary food), she goes down to her office. Dani isn't sure whether or not they're still confined to the Mountain: she wants more chocolate and decent coffee with a passion, so if they are, she needs to give Amelia a shopping list. In a fair universe, they'd at least get seventy-two at this point (because that's standard after any offworld mission of five days or more), but she isn't sure about that either. And this time she might even actually take it, since after two interminable weeks in the _Tok'ra_ tunnels, she wants fresh air.

Her inbox isn't too much of a mess, and she knows why. (She's thinking of marrying Jonas, but Amelia swears she has prior claim.) This morning, it's an emergency (she's out of change and she can't go up to the machines during First Shift anyway), so Dani cedes Amelia all rights to Jonas in exchange for three candy bars; Amelia always comes well-supplied. Unfortunately, Amelia's a tea-drinker, so Dani's out of luck there (stuck with Commissary coffee for the foreseeable future). She catches up on news she missed while she was offworld. Apparently her guess was right: the NID is following up on a series of suicides of people in important (but not too important) government positions. None of them were actually _Goa'uld_. If the NID found anything interesting in their files or their personal possessions, they aren't telling the SGC. Offworld missions resumed ten days ago. They'd better go investigate those other seven Gate addresses _now._ She makes a note.

There's chocolate cake at lunch.

Around 1500—more proof the universe is returning to normal—Cam drops by her office. She's working on the Tartarus mission report, but she really has no idea of what to leave out at this point, so she's concentrating right now on the parts about Tartarus. She needs to talk to Cam before she finalizes things.

"Working?" he asks.

"No," she says, leaning back in her chair. One good thing about their mission, she's decided, is she's missed two Staff Meetings. She's picked up a couple of briefings she needs to prepare from Amelia, though. Assuming she can do that from _prison._

"We've got seventy-two," he says. "We're free to leave. And... we're out of the rotation."

There's an etiquette to these things, she knows. Graham will have come to tell him—in person. Cam's told Sammy first, since he visits Sammy's lab first, most days. Now he's telling her. And "out of the rotation" and "seventy-two" are two separate things. "For how long?" she asks.

"Indefinitely," Cam says, and oh, she's heard him sound bland and neutral and nothing-to-do-with-me before, but this is even more so. And she knows why. He doesn't want her to think, doesn't want her to draw conclusions, doesn't want her to say anything. Not here. Not now. General Landry is taking them off the line. That's insane. Now is when they're needed most. But all she says is: "I could use a vacation," and Cam smiles. 

Since they've got seventy-two, they all leave promptly at end-of-shift, and tomorrow is Friday, so Dani says she'll be the one to drive back to pick up Teal'c for Team Night. They loiter together for a few minutes in the parking lot, just talking. Cam bitches about the probable state of the current contents of his refrigerator, and Dani makes a mental list of things she'll need to buy on the way home, and a list of errands to run tomorrow, and Cam and Sammy make plans for a joint grocery-shopping expedition. And tomorrow they can start early, because they won't be starting after work.

Cam asks if there's anything in particular they'd like on the menu tomorrow, and Dani surprises herself by saying "fruit," but it's been a long two weeks of MREs, and Cam laughs. And they go their separate ways. Time enough to talk tomorrow. She wants time to think, first.

She hits the convenience store for beer and milk and ice cream and cookies and chocolate, and detours to the Thai place that doesn't deliver, so it's a couple of hours later by the time she gets home. Her lights are on, since they're on a timer, and she goes in, and puts the perishables away, and throws out the other perishables (bread and milk and cookies and orange juice) that have gone bad, and eats. Cam calls to tell her his refrigerator was in worse shape than he thought, and she suggests moving. He says he's baking bread. She talks to him while she loads the dishwasher and they argue about what movies to pick for tomorrow until he talks her into watching two weeks of backlog of TiVo instead (which will probably be sports, and therefore mind-numbingly boring, but he likes them and he's gotten Teal'c pretty interested and she thinks Sammy's a secret fan and what they watch on Team Night is never the point). And he promises he'll make it worth her while (which sounds interesting) and then she plays the piano for a couple of hours and debates (again) about getting a television (but where would she put it?) And she still has a backlog of journals, so she takes a pile of them, and cookies, and a big mug of good coffee, and goes off to bed. It's odd and unsettling and more than a little lonely to sleep alone again. She didn't notice last night because she was so tired. Tonight she does.

And home—and safe—means nightmares.

She's walking through Tartarus, and she's alone. She's surrounded by the dead, and every one of them is wearing an SGC uniform. She's looking for someone, but she doesn't know who. She only knows she can't wake up until she finds him. She turns over body after body, searching, until she reaches the throneroom. General Landry is sitting on Anubis's throne, shouting at her to tell the truth. He's surrounded by the dead; she can see their uniforms, all her friends are here. One man has a gleam of metal around his waist. The poison belt. That's what killed them.

She turns him over and it's Jack.

And she tries to wake up, but she can't. She's in the Gate Room, and it's thirty months ago, and she's on her knees, bleeding, and she looks up, and it isn't an SF with a pistol, it's Cam. And he raises the pistol, and she thinks he doesn't know Anubis is gone, that she's her again, and he's going for the kill-shot, but he raises the pistol higher and puts it in his mouth...

The sound of the dream-pistol-shot mingles with her scream.

She scrabbles for the light-switch; the bedroom is flooded in light. She sits up, wincing at the glare, and blinks her eyes open to look at the time. 0500. Almost a decent night's sleep. And the dream was terrifying, but it loses its power quickly once she's awake. Cam would never do that. She believes that. Shoot her—yes, if he had to. Not himself.

Cameron Mitchell is a survivor.

The dream leaves her shaky and nauseated. It's an effort to get to her feet, to put on a robe, to walk the house (there are no monsters here, real world or not), to start the coffee brewing. She's still unsettled. Shower. The dream fades slowly, but by the time she's out of the shower, she's nearly forgotten what she dreamed. (Nearly.) But it lingers on, enough so that when her normal chores are done (pick up her mail, a little more grocery-shopping, start her laundry) she runs one more errand.

She hates the mall, hates the mall stores. When she has to shop—for anything other than groceries or a few other necessities—she does it on-line. More efficient, and just as good. But not, she thinks, for this. She knows—in theory—what she wants. But not really what's good. She wanders in-and-out of several stores, feeling lost and irritable. She knows she could have asked Sammy for advice (could ask her now; she's only a phone call away), but somehow she doesn't want anyone to know. She finally goes back to one of the first stores she visited and takes the plunge. A couple of thousand dollars later, she is the baffled owner of a complete set of pots and pans and casserole dishes. Nearly every item she's ever seen Cam use, including a roasting pan. The boxes fill the back of the Jeep, and when she gets them home and opens them, the items themselves fill the (formerly empty) cupboards in her kitchen. She bought knives, of course, and a set of "kitchen tools" too, just to be sure. So she now owns that whisk he's always bitching about the lack of (when he whisks things in her kitchen).

She's not completely sure why she's done it. It's not as if she ever intends to cook. Ever. Nor does she actually contemplate inviting Cam to cook at her house ( _Jack's house_ ) for any reason she can imagine. So there's honestly no reason to have bought all these...things. 

Except she did. 

She just won't think about why.

And by then it's time to go pick up Teal'c, so she does. There's a kind of illicit thrill in walking around the SGC in civilian clothes. Not something she does very often.

They make a last-minute detour to pick up a few more things Cam ran out of. He thought Teal'c would have a better chance of remembering them than she would (so Teal'c says). So they go to a store she's never been to before (Teal'c has directions) where she pays a stunning amount of money for four pints of (out-of-season) raspberries, and buys heavy cream and bittersweet chocolate and beer (the beer wasn't on the list, but you really can't ever have too much). And Teal'c buys all the tabloids they have available at the checkout, and she buys a dozen candy bars, and Teal'c won't let her eat any. Not that she would (she's learned better by now, when going to Cam's). They're for emergencies. Also, she needs to pay Amelia back.

Cam's apartment smells like fresh bread.

Pot-roast for dinner. And salad, too, because they're all craving fresh things, and some the raspberries are for the dressing (Cam announces he is never allowing Samantha Carter to shell walnuts again, since she cheats: Sammy just looks innocent), but the rest of them are for the chocolate raspberry mousse he's serving up for dessert (and he apologizes that the chocolate cups he's going to serve it in are store-bought and Sammy throws a pillow at him).

He made cookies, too. Or—really—he and Sammy did, earlier. Dani isn't let to have any before dinner, but she can wait. Chocolate chip cookies? She has patience (and half of them have walnuts. Cam says darkly all of them would have had walnuts if not for a Certain Someone).

And they all eat stupefying amounts of food. Seconds on everything. Fresh bread sliced from the loaf, and still warm, so the butter slides off it. She thinks the last time she ate this much in one sitting may have been Thanksgiving. Almost a year ago now.

And then they settle down on the couch, and Sammy sprawls against Cam, and Dani curls up against Teal'c (she doesn't want to think about Oshu, but at least Teal'c is safe, Teal'c is here), and Cam turns on the television and pages down through the TiVo menu, and the three of them settle on what they want to watch, and they even do, for a few minutes.

Then Cam says, "Helluva time to be off the line," and Sammy says, "I was wondering about that."

Dani says (because it's the only thing she can think of): "There's nothing wrong with us," because the only time a Team is taken off the line is when they're injured or compromised. And they aren't. And Cam smiles just a little—not a good smile—and Sammy makes a face. And suddenly Dani _knows._ It isn't just her General Landry doesn't like. It's all of them. It's the worst possible time for this. There are seven more Gate addresses. They need to check them all out. "Anubis survived Antarctica," she says slowly. Because she needs to tell someone.

"You think he survived this," Cam says, and it isn't a question.

She closes her eyes, concentrating. Trying to think like a _Goa'uld_ , like a _Goa'uld's_ First Prime. "Oshu went to Tartarus. He came offering Yu's surrender. We found him in Anubis's throne room. Who would he have come before?"

"Anubis." Teal'c sounds certain. "For any of Anubis's underlings to presume to speak for their master would be a presumption punishable by death."

"Ba'al might," she says. "But we didn't find his body. So Oshu came before Anubis. But Anubis wasn't there when we arrived."

"Unless, of course, he's one of us," Cam says uneasily.

"No," Dani says with certainty. "It's been almost two days. Osiris said he burns out his hosts. I saw the sores on Alexi's body. The first ones appear within twenty-four hours. Taddy gave us all a clean bill of health, and...I can vouch for Sammy, and she can vouch for me. But I'll strip if you want me to."

Cam thinks it over for a minute, then shakes his head. "Last time Anubis was in the SGC, he was trying to get offworld. Four of us were just standing in front of a perfectly good offworld Stargate. If he'd been in any of us then, he'd just've shot the others and took off from there."

Sammy sighs. "I could have lived without knowing that."

"Sorry." She is, really. She'd rather not know it herself.

"So...where is he?" Cam asks.

Dani shrugs. "Waiting for Yu. I don't know if he can dislodge another _Goa'uld_ from its host, but Yu has a lot of human servants in his court." Jacob spent months serving Yu. He gave her a complete run-down, everything Ji'an was supposed to know.

"And the next place he'll go will be to one of his secret hideouts," Cam says.

"Which means they have to be secured as quickly as possible," she says.

"Which brings us right back to being out of the rotation," Cam says.

She wants to say General Landry can send other Teams. He can. Everyone who serves on the Teams is good. The question is, will he? She hesitates. "I might take some vacation," she says cautiously. She could go to Washington. Speak to General Hammond. She wouldn't ask favors even for SG-1, but they have to stop Anubis while they can.

"You could use a vacation," Cam says agreeably.

There's no need for any more discussion (at least right now), so they watch basketball. The way a thing is presented provides its own information independent from the thing itself; she finds that interesting, even though the sport itself bores her. There's a lot to be learned about a culture by its response to its own entertainment. Cam talks about the teams the SGC has; it seems crazy to have a basketball court set up a mile underground, but on the other hand, they all (all the Teams, all the personnel) spend so much time there. He's still coaxing her to come and at least watch the games. She's still refusing. By now it's become a point of principle, though her reason for not going has long since vanished.

"You're a stubborn little thing," Cam says lazily, and Sammy snickers. 

"You haven't seen stubborn yet," she says.

"Think I might have," Cam says. The two of them bicker idly about whether or not Cam has ever seen Dani really dig her heels in about anything. She's almost sure he has. Ridiculous to think he hasn't. It's October, and he joined them a year ago July. Plenty of time to have seen her at her worst. And he has. He's seen her sick and drunk and injured, and she's mortally insulted him (twice: once deliberately) and it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. He really isn't like anyone she's ever known, and she's actually met a pretty wide range of people. Generals, mercenaries, aliens, would-be gods.

Dessert is decadent. There's something luxurious about eating both the contents and the container. Sort of a very grown-up version of an ice-cream cone. Cam made it up in the middle of the afternoon (since it takes a long time to set, he explains) and the raspberries she bought were for garnish. There's raspberry liqueur in the whipped cream, too. Sammy tells him he has a fine future as a cook. Cam says he likes to plan ahead.

Dani contemplates the cookies wistfully, but she simply has no room.

After dessert there's another argument over what to watch next (she stays out of it), and TiVo is abandoned in favor of Cam's DVD library. They end the evening with _Monty Python and the Holy Grail._ Cam and Sammy recite half the lines along with the actors, and even Teal'c thinks some of it is funny. At least it isn't supposed to be historically accurate. Then Sammy leaves to drive Teal'c back to Base.

"Where's your bag?" Cam asks, sitting down next to her on the couch.

She waves a hand vaguely, covering volumes. About "I'm going to get you kicked out of here, you know," and "exactly what would you say if the neighbors called the police because they heard screaming," and "this isn't really the best time to have to bring something like this up to General Landry." And Cam puts an arm around her, and she knows she doesn't have to say any of it. "Want me to go down and get it?" he asks.

"No," she says. "I'll go." She might not dream tonight. She's safer here. At least it seems that way. Odd to think of Cam—who's responsible for taking her into mortal peril— _"Well, let me have just a little bit of peril?" "No, it's unhealthy."_ (she thinks of the movie they watched tonight; okay, parts of it were actually funny)—as making her feel safe. But he does.

It's cold outside, and brilliantly clear. She sees Orion in the sky. The first Stargate glyph she worked out, all those years ago. The key to figuring out what the symbols on the Coverstone were, and how to make the Stargate work. Not letters. Not hieroglyphs. _Constellations._ And now she's walked on the surface of a planet circling one of the suns in Orion's belt, and spoken to the people who live there. Such a strange life.

She opens her Jeep and pulls out her go-bag, and goes back inside. Cam has the bottles and the glasses out. Their personal tradition. She sits down and he pours for her, then for himself. "Writing up my mission report is going to be interesting," she says.

"Well, you'll want to cover the changes in the _Tok'ra_ Council, I guess," Cam says meditatively. "And how we had to keep after them about this. Don't know if you want to bring up that memory-recall thing."

"Not really," she says. It didn't do them any good, anyway.

"After that, well, we got approval from the Council, checked in with Oshu at the pre-arranged location, set up a meeting place, cleared the procedure with the Council, and deployed the weapon. Then we confirmed its use, and came home."

She nods. Now she knows what Cam's report will say. Hers won't contradict it. And if they're both—all—leaving out a great deal, well, that's nothing new.

He sits up with her longer than usual for one of their Friday nights. But she needs him to. And if she doesn't sleep without dreams, at least she doesn't wake up screaming.

#

On Saturday he does laundry at her place, or starts to, but there's a phone call and he says he has to go. Major Heffron has called, he says. A little trouble at Lieutenant Kemp's. She asks if she can help, and Cam looks surprised, and then says, "Sure." So they get in his car and they go. He drives fast, and she knows "a little trouble" is a lot of trouble, because the Teams don't have little troubles, not on Saturday afternoons, not the kind where Kemp's CO would call Cam. SG-14 lost Sergeant Calloway back in July. Dr. Spieler is back on the team now (back from Medical Exemption), and Fourteen has a new fourth, a Sergeant Krause. (Suzanne Kiplinger has still not passed GTO&T, and writes Dani weekly memos about its superfluity, which Dani ignores.) When they get to the house, there's a woman standing on the street holding a crying baby with a crying child clinging to her leg and looking as if she wants to cry herself, and Major Heffron (standing outside with her, waiting for Cam) comes over and tells Cam that this morning the Lieutenant decided his wife was a _Goa'uld_. She managed to get out of the house, but he's barricaded himself in the bathroom with his personal weapon. And they need to get this locked down nice and quiet, _now,_ because they can't involve the police, not with Kemp raving about the snakes.

Cam looks at her, and she nods, and goes over to the woman, and introduces herself—"I'm Dani Jackson, I work with your husband, and everything's going to be fine"—and takes the baby out of her arms (she knows more about babies than people think) so Kemp's wife can pick up the boy, and the two of them walk up the street.

She doesn't look back.

She asks the woman her name (Lorraine), and her children's names (Jason and Heather), and how long she's been married (six years), and what their previous post was (Barksdale AFB)—anything to take her mind off what's going on in her house. She jogs the baby on her hip until Heather stops crying, and they go back to Cam's car and sit inside, because it's cold out here, and she works hard (Colorado's a lot colder than Louisiana, isn't it?), at making Lorraine Kemp _focus_ on her.

There's a gunshot. And Lorraine wants to go running, but Dani won't let her. Either somebody's dead, or everything's fine now.

And about five minutes later Major Heffron comes up the walk to the car and taps on the window, and Dani opens the door, and he says nobody's hurt, and they'll be sending an ambulance down from Command for the Lieutenant, and if they'll just wait out here until it comes. And Lorraine Kemp doesn't cry, not in front of her children, but Dani knows she wants to.

The ambulance comes (it's an unmarked van) and people go in with a stretcher and come out with a stretcher, and then Dani and Mrs. Kemp go into the house. Cam is there (a little mussed up) and he takes the boy (Jason's looking grave and worried, but on the whole, interested in life) and suggests there's probably juice in the kitchen, and Major Heffron takes Mrs. Kemp off to the living room, and Cam finds juice in the refrigerator (Jason holds out for an icy pop though, and he gets it) and Heather, who'd fallen asleep, decides now is the perfect time to wake up and fuss, and Jason says she wants a bottle, so Cam finds that, and they heat it and feed her and then (of course) she needs changing, so Jason shows them her room, and then his room, and wants to know if his Daddy's going to be all right, and Cam says, "Course he is." (That's what you say to children, and Dani only hopes it isn't a lie.)

By then the rest of the Unofficial Support Group that surrounds the Teams has arrived: Major Heffron called his wife, and she brought some of her friends, and they'll look after Mrs. Kemp and her children. Part of the job of a military wife. And if they don't know quite what happened, or why, it doesn't really matter. At least Kemp is still alive. (Of course, Heffron's going to need a certain amount of looking after now as well. He's lost two members of his command in four months. That's hard. She and Cam both know it.)

"What happened?" she asks, when they finally leave.

Cam sighs, in a way that tells her he isn't quite sure. "Decided we were all _Goa'uld_ ," he says, after a long pause.

It's actually one of the most common ways they (we, you, everyone she works with, everyone she sees on a daily basis) snap. _Goa'uld_ don't have to sound like _Goa'uld_ if they don't want to. Kawalsky didn't. The idea of being taken over by something—evil, undetectable, uncontrollable—is Mankind's most ancient fear. It's at the root of every tale of demonic possession, and every culture has those. Eventually (for some of the people at the SGC) reasonable caution becomes unreasoning paranoia.

They go back to her house, and she gets the laundry started again, and Cam calls Sammy. Sammy needs to know, and Dani knows Cam needs to talk about it, in the military way she knows she'll never completely grasp. She knows enough, though, to put on the coffee and phone in the order to the good pizza place while he's on the phone, so Sammy and the pizza arrive just about together. And they sit around, and eat pizza, and they talk, and they don't talk, and that's life in the war zone that so much resembles a quiet peaceful ordinary life. And isn't.

#

It took George all day Friday and the whole weekend besides to clear his desk and put patches on everything he could, because he doesn't know how long he's going to have to be in the Springs, but he knows he can't leave until the problem there is _fixed._

Sunday afternoon he calls up Josephine and tells her he's coming out for a visit and does she have a patch of floor for him, and she squeals with delight and says the girls will be delighted to see him and of course she has a bed for him and how long is he staying? And he tells her at least a little while, and how are the girls (and every time he sees them—growing like weeds—it's always a sweet pain, because he thinks of how much Peter would have loved to see them grow up. But Peter's with his Tess in Heaven, God rest them both; his boy died in Iraq and left him the best daughter-in-law a man could ask for), and he manages to work the conversation around to Samantha—Josie sees her now and again—and not a whisper of trouble there, not that he really thought there would be. And Josie teases him—again—about retiring, and he promises her—again—that he's thinking about it. Soon. He was eight months away from it ten years ago, after all. Maybe when Henry leaves office, because George knows he doesn't have a hope while the man's still Commander In Chief. They're old friends, after all, and Henry's hard to say "no" to.

Sunday night George hops aboard a jet at Bolling (rank hath its privileges, and while he doesn't abuse them, he doesn't despise them, either) and flies into Peterson, and from there a car and driver takes him to the big white house that was home for so many years. Home to Josie now that she's permanently stationed here. And on Monday morning—not too early—he goes up to the Mountain.

He's not in uniform for this trip. It's not an official visit by any stretch. And he has a feeling—just a nagging notion at the back of his mind—a General's uniform isn't going to wear too well down there these days. So it's old jeans and work boots and a comfortable flannel shirt. About what he'd wear to potter around in his garden. Hank knows he's coming, but not quite when. Just as well.

He gets a few odd looks as he makes his way through the checkpoints. It's been a while, and there's a certain amount of turnover here. He's not in a hurry. He's not sure what he's looking for, but he knows he'll know when he's found it. He starts out in the Commissary, with a cup of coffee and a slice of pie. Wanders on down to the Infirmary, and Dr. Brightman is good, and competent, but nobody's ever going to take the place of Janet Frasier. Sometimes he thinks people got better in her Infirmary because they were afraid not to; Janet Frasier would walk up to the Devil himself and spit right in his eye if she'd felt the need. 

And about an hour after he's arrived—nothing yet—he's decided it's about time to go see Sam and get this show on the road. And he's on his way down to 19, because he's pretty sure she'll be in her lab, and it's a place to start anyway, when he's walking down the corridor and Colonel Harper (SG-5) grabs him by the elbow and says: "General Hammond, sir, you're back!"

And that's when George knows Hank Landry has more trouble than he can possibly imagine. Because when hardened Marines are saying things like that, the rot in his command goes soul-deep. But he smiles, and Harper steps back, and they both pretend the moment never happened, and he says he's just here for a visit, and asks if Colonel Carter is around, and Harper's face flickers just a bit, and George prays Hank hasn't done anything unforgivably stupid, but all Harper says is that she signed in this morning, General, so George thanks him and goes on his way.

He gets down to the lab. Door's open and there's no warning light on, so he looks inside. Wonders if it's good luck or bad luck all four of them are there.

Samantha sees him first. She looks up, and there's a moment of bafflement—the expression someone has when they see someone out of their proper place—and then she smiles radiantly and says: "General Hammond!"

And the others all turn around, and Teal'c actually looks pleased, and gives him a very low bow, and says it is "indeed good to see you again, General Hammond," and Dr. Jackson says, "General Hammond!" (looking as if she wants to be bouncing up and down with excitement) and young Mitchell says it's good to see him again, sir, and since he's gotten here he's heard so much about him, and all of it good. And they ask what he's doing here, and how long he can stay, and Dr. Jackson says Cam _has_ to cook for him, and Samantha says he can't possibly pass up an offer like that, and Mitchell says it'll be a little crowded, and Dr. Jackson says he can use her place, and Mitchell demands to know just what he's going to cook _with_ at her place.

"I have pots," she says.

"Since when?" Mitchell asks.

"I bought some," she answers defensively, and George knows that for just this instant, they've forgotten he's there.

"Oh yeah?" Mitchell answers, grinning at her. "Then I guess I've got to cook."

They remember his presence and turn back to him expectantly. "You won't be disappointed, sir," Samantha tells him seriously.

And he just can't figure this out. There's no sign of danger here at all. They don't seem unhappy. When Dr. Jackson is unhappy (he remembers when he gave SG-1 to Colonel Makepeace, and represses a shudder) the world knows about it. And when she doesn't like someone, she isn't shy about making that clear, either, and it's obvious she has no problems at all with Cameron Mitchell. Dotes on him, in fact. He can't for the life of him figure out a damn thing upsetting anyone, and that just doesn't make sense.

"Ah, George, they told me you'd arrived."

Then Hank appears in the doorway, and suddenly Mitchell's grown an extra three inches in his spine—well, that's all right; George doesn't know how Mitchell does things—but Samantha's gotten up off her stool and looks like she's about to click her heels together and salute. Teal'c's glowering; the man looks as if he's suddenly gone back to being the First Prime of Apophis—

And Dr. Jackson looks not only as if she's trying to find a back way out of the lab, but as if she can't remember her own name.

So George tells Hank he just wanted to look around the place a little first for old time's sake, and Mitchell and Samantha and Teal'c are _still_ in full military brace (it makes his back hurt just looking at them), and Dr. Jackson isn't making eye contact with anyone, and it's as if none of them are in the room at all. For that matter, Hank's ignoring them just as thoroughly.

And he says he'll be along in a few minutes, and Hank makes noises about lunch at the O Club, and George says that sounds fine, and Hank wanders off, and Samantha sits back down and Mitchell unbends—but not all the way, not yet—and Dr. Jackson's eyes focus again.

"I didn't really think Hank Landry was the kind of man who stood on formality," George says mildly.

"No, sir," Mitchell says, and George Hammond has been "sirred" by experts in his time. He knows damned well this particular "No, sir," means young Mitchell doesn't mean to tell him a blessed thing.

"The General has never expressed a preference," Teal'c says.

George isn't a cultural specialist. He has experts for that, and he's standing in the room with one. And he's heard her go on often enough about the Jaffa use of names and titles. If a Jaffa uses your name, you're a person; it's a gesture of respect. Teal'c always called him by name. 

Teal'c is not calling Hank Landry by name.

He'd asked Hank what he'd done to piss off SG-1, and he hadn't been one hundred percent certain that was the problem at the time, because the three of them he knows from his own years here are good people, as good as any it has ever been his honor to command, and Mitchell seems up to their weight. (That doesn't mean SG-1 always saw eye-to-eye with him on every decision he had to make—even needed a day or two to cool down some times—but there was always respect on both sides.) But now he knows he was right: Hank has not only pissed off SG-1 right royally, but (Sweet Lord in Heaven) the Marines. Which means the rest of the Teams as well, because it only stands to reason the Teams all stick together, but if there's a problem the Marines and SG-1 are seeing the same side of, it's big, and Hank doesn't have a clue about it, and if George can't get to the bottom of it they might as well just shut down the Program right now and send everybody home and _they just can't do that_.

But now the four of them are back to laughing and talking—about the menu for his upcoming dinner—and teasing Dr. Jackson about having pots and pans, and apparently Mitchell got a care package from his family that he means to share around, and if George hadn't just seen them with Hank, he wouldn't have believed it. And Samantha reaches for a gadget on her workbench—still talking—and Mitchell reaches right over and takes her hands off it.

"Manners, manners, Sam," he says.

And Samantha puts on her best outraged expression, and Dr. Jackson snickers and kicks Mitchell in the ankle, and Mitchell reaches out and musses up her hair, and George knows there's nothing wrong _inside_ SG-1. Teal'c hasn't turned a hair at all the horseplay.

Hank did something to one of them. That has to be where it started. But George thinks they'd forgive even that: both Teal'c and Dr. Jackson have worked with the _Goa'uld_ in the past, after all. Not that he's suggesting Hank Landry is anywhere near as bad as a _Goa'uld._ But whatever started with SG-1 hasn't been forgiven. It's spread. And he has to find out what it is, and if there's any way in all of God's Creation he can fix it now. So he tells them he'd better get along, and Samantha asks him if he's staying at Josie's, and he says he is, and she says he should bring her and the kids along to dinner because Cam isn't really happy unless he's cooking for a crowd and Dani's table seats ten, and he says he'll see about that, and what's their mission schedule looking like?

And there's a beat of silence, and he knows he's hit a trip-wire, but it had to happen sooner or later. And Dr. Jackson says (much too brightly) that they're out of the rotation right now, so scheduling won't be a problem. And George says in that case, he looks forward to dinner, and what about tomorrow night? 

And Mitchell says that'll be just fine, and George goes off to make his courtesy check-in with Hank, wondering where the hell to start at getting to the bottom of all this. Mitchell might not be the ringleader. He's the New Kid in SG-1, after all. Dr. Jackson isn't really good at lying, but that doesn't mean you can ever get the truth out of her if she doesn't want to tell it. He'll twist Samantha's arm if he has to, but he doesn't want to start there. So at the end of the day, he goes with what is (on the surface) his least-likely candidate: Teal'c.

It's true Teal'c's an alien (in all senses of the word). But having an outsider's perspective isn't necessarily a drawback. And after seven years, George thinks he's probably pretty good at decoding what Teal'c has to say. So he goes to his quarters, and asks if Teal'c's busy, and asks if he has time to talk to him, because if there's one thing he know for sure about the man, it's that he values politeness. He wonders if Hank's been rude to Teal'c, but he doubts it. That's enough to set SG-1 off. Not to send the whole SGC up like flashpaper.

But Teal'c says he would welcome the opportunity to converse with General Hammond, so George comes in, and sits down, and asks after Ry'ac, and Ish'ta, and the progress of the Jaffa Rebellion, until Teal'c gets fed up with small talk and asks him what it is he wants to know. And plain speaking aside, George knows he can't just ask Teal'c what Hank Landry did to offend SG-1, but he does his best. He reminds Teal'c he's Landry's superior, and if anything needs to be said to General Landry, he's the one who can say it. And Teal'c regards him for almost a minute, and then tells him "the General does not possess the soul of a true warrior." And all that tells George is Hank actually has managed to mortally offend Teal'c, but he knew that already, and it doesn't tell him _how._ So he figures they're going to have to take the long way around, and he'll just pray he can figure it out for himself.

"Tell me what happened in July, Teal'c," he says. Because that's when this all started, according to Hank, so at least that's when it got bad enough for him to notice.

"Abydos was destroyed by Anubis," Teal'c says, after a moment's thought. "He next attacked Kelowna. We were able to prevent him from destroying it at that time. However, his weapon initiated a chain reaction in the _naquaadah_ beneath the surface. The planet was later rendered uninhabitable."

All that was in the weekly reports. "Anything else?" George asks. "Maybe something personal?" Something that wouldn't have gone into a report.

"We participated in a mock funeral for O'Neill."

It takes George a few minutes to work that through. Yes. The Asgard had asked for Jack's body, and the SGC had turned it over to them. Teal'c never engages in pointless small talk. If he's mentioning this, it's important. "That must have been difficult," he suggests.

"A commander must learn to respect his people," Teal'c says. And George knows he's getting closer to the center of the problem. He just can't connect the dots. How does burying (or not burying) Jack lead to full-blown insurrection four months later? _Who_ didn't Hank respect? And when? And how? "I'm afraid I don't understand," he says. And Teal'c inclines his head. He knows George doesn't understand. But he's getting close to the edge of what he's going to say.

"Among your people there is a saying a leader must lead by example," Teal'c says. "This concept is not known among the _Goa'uld_."

"I don't imagine it would be," George answers.

"I no longer serve the _Goa'uld_ ," Teal'c points out.

"No," George says. "You don't." 

"Gladly did I serve under your command, and O'Neill's, for many years," Teal'c says.

"I know you did, Teal'c. And I was always honored by that," he says. There's something here, and he's missing it. He knows there's something between Teal'c and Hank, but he needs to know _what_. And Teal'c inclines his head, and says Colonel Mitchell also possesses the soul of a true warrior, and he has great confidence in him. George raises an eyebrow, because if he can't get anything else out of the man, maybe he can at least get his unvarnished opinion about Mitchell. And Teal'c looks him right in the eye and says, "It is my opinion O'Neill would approve of him."

That settles that, not that he really had any doubts. And George realizes Teal'c has said just about all he intends to say. And it really hasn't helped much at all.

On Tuesday George takes the girls to the zoo. Sure, they're supposed to be in school, but Grandpa doesn't get out to see them that often. Both of them growing like weeds. And he knows he spoils them, but hell. That's what grandchildren are for. And after he drops them off home, he drives out to the cemetery.

He's not much for graveside visits—except, of course, to Tess and Peter. He's had to bury too many fine young men and women, write too many letters to families where he couldn't tell the truth about how their loved ones died. Attend too damned many funerals in the line of duty. But the answer's here. Teal'c told him that. If he can only figure out what it is.

There's nothing on the marker but a name. "Jonathan J. O'Neill." No date of birth or date of death. Not even his rank. He'd wanted to be buried next to his son, George knows. It seems a shame—after all he did—he couldn't even have that.

But then it's about time to get a move on, so he heads on over to the house. He knows they invited Josie and the girls, but he thought tonight had better be just them, and so he called Mitchell to let him know (there's a difference between cooking for five and cooking for eight) and all the boy said was that they hoped to see all of them soon. George thinks that's a fine idea, but he still has a lot of digging to do. And he needs to find some way to head Hank off before he does something unforgivably stupid. The trouble is, the list of potential commanders for the SGC isn't any longer than it was three years ago.

He pulls up on the street and parks.

Hard not to think of it as Jack's house, even now. The last time he was here was for the wake. And the time before...well, that was a wake, too. Only Jack was at that one. And he'd had to go in and tell him—tell all of them—the SGC was being shut down and he'd been transferred to Washington. So his recent memories of the place aren't all that happy. 

Teal'c opens the door just as he gets to it, and welcomes him inside. And the whole house smells like cooking. "Colonel Mitchell, Colonel Carter, and Danielle Jackson are in the kitchen. They are preparing the meal," Teal'c says. And George hears a whoop, and a crash, and laughter. He smiles. It's been too long since there was laughter in this house. So he follows Teal'c back toward the kitchen (there's a fire burning merrily in the fireplace, and the dining room table is set, white linen and silver and china, as formal as anything he'd find in Washington) and there the three of them are.

And Mitchell's wearing an apron (with a smudge of flour on his nose), and Samantha's looking relaxed and happy, and Dr. Jackson is waving an enormous knife around in a pretty hair-raising way, but when she sees him, she sets it down and comes over and asks him what he'll take to drink. And he says he wouldn't say "no" to a Scotch, so they go back out into the living room (Teal'c takes her place in the kitchen) and she opens up her liquor cabinet.

And this is just about the first chance he's had to get her alone, and he's not sure where he's going with this, but he has to try. So he says he stopped by the grave on the way here, and does she ever visit? She looks absolutely blank. The woman honestly has _no idea in all of God's Creation_ of what he's talking about. So he says, "Colonel O'Neill's grave," and she goes absolutely still, and says, "It's not his grave. I thought you knew."

This is where the trouble is. Or where it began. He's sure of it now.

"I know the Asgard asked us, as a favor, if we would consider allowing them to take his body," George says gently. It goes against the grain. A man should be allowed to rest in hallowed earth when his time is done. It smacks a little too much of medical experiments on the living for his peace of mind. Call him old-fashioned. 

She looks at him, studying him, and he knows whatever she says next will be absolutely accurate and contain as little truth as she can manage. "We gave them the body," she says, and her voice is perfectly even. And then she seems to shake herself, as if remembering something she needs to do. "Actually, it's a lucky coincidence you happened to come out here for a visit. But that can wait until after dinner."

He's about to say something—try to get her to tell him something else about the Asgard, or find out just why she's glad he's here right now—but Mitchell is shouting from the kitchen, telling her salad does _not_ chop itself, and she smiles at him, and shrugs, and goes.

He takes a seat in the corner of the kitchen—the privilege of the honored guest—and watches the preparations. This obviously isn't the first time they've cooked together, and the kitchen isn't all that big, but none of them gets in each others' way. They're all _easy_ with each other in a way he likes to see, and he knows whatever the problem is, it isn't the stress of the job. They're handling that.

When they sit down to eat, it's smothered pork chops, and scratch biscuits, and red potatoes, and snap beans cooked with garlic, and black-eyed peas, and after the first bite, George would be willing to swear he was sitting at his Mama's table again. And Mitchell apologizes for the fact there isn't homemade jam to dress up the biscuits, saying _someone_ ate the last jar his momma sent him, and Samantha says it wasn't her, and Dr. Jackson looks miffed and says he put it in front of her and what did he _expect_ her to do?

George would like to think the way they're all being themselves means he'll get straight answers out of them here tonight (away from the Mountain, off the clock) but he's not sure it does. He's revising his earlier opinion about Mitchell, though. At first he hadn't pegged him as the possible ringleader for any trouble: SG-1's newest member, an impeccable record right up to the moment he went down in Antarctica. Never put a foot wrong. But he's been watching the four of them together ever since he got here, and thinking about what Teal'c said yesterday.

Samantha Carter is a good girl and a fine officer. Since she joined SG-1 she's made a hash of most of the UCMJ (along with most of the rest of the Gate Teams, it's true), but she's never once done anything immoral or unethical. Teal'c and Dr. Jackson, he knows, both consider the Code a pretty foolish notion, each for their own reasons. And it's pretty clear all three of them look to Mitchell to set the tone. That means that since George knows Hank's trouble started in SG-1, it's possible—it's probable—it began with Cameron Mitchell. And that means he may end up having to try to have that talk with Mitchell after all, and he really isn't looking forward to it, because somebody stubborn enough to get up and walk after what his 302 did to him is probably stubborn enough to keep his mouth shut when he feels he ought to. And trusting George enough to let their hair down in front of him is a long chalk from admitting to doing something that could get them all jailed and shot, because that seems to be the direction Hank's thoughts are tending, and George certainly doesn't want to give him any ammunition.

But after dinner (dessert still to come, but it's time for coffee now) Dr. Jackson says he's never seen her library, and would he like the tour? And he knows this isn't really about her library, but they take their coffee and go on up the stairs to the big room over the garage. There's only the one chair (her desk chair, and comfortable) and she offers it to him. And since age hath as many privileges as rank, he takes it. This time he isn't going to start the conversation. He wants to know what she's going to say. Whatever it is, it doesn't really seem to be easy for her.

"Our last mission was a strike against Tartarus, Anubis's throneworld," she begins. "Its Gate address was one of eight I acquired from an interrogation of Simon Gardner in July." 

George is an old poker player and a good one, so he doesn't give anything away. But there's July again. A lot seems to have happened that month. 

"The difficulty in attacking Tartarus lay precisely in the fact that Osiris _did_ believe it to be Anubis's throneworld. Not only would it certainly be extraordinarily well-defended, if Anubis were to trace the attack back to Earth, he would, in all probability, send his fleet against us immediately, and this time we would be without any means to defend ourselves."

She's lecturing him, but he doesn't hurry her. She'll get to the point soon enough.

"Fortunately for us, Anubis is currently as much of a problem for the rest of the _Goa'uld_ as he is for Earth. Yu's First Prime, Oshu, came to us seeking our assistance. Yu wished to use the _Tok'ra's_ symbiote poison to attack Anubis at Tartarus. We contacted the _Tok'ra_ and made the arrangements. Though we were unable to confirm that Anubis is, in fact, dead, there is a strong indication his forces are, at least briefly, in disarray. For this reason, it is crucial we visit those other seven Gate addresses as soon as possible."

They only got back on Thursday. They probably haven't filed their reports on the Tartarus Mission yet. What he's heard about it from Hank is that they went AWOL for two weeks. He certainly hasn't heard this. "You don't think Anubis is dead, Dr. Jackson?"

She's staring at the rug. "We didn't find his body. Oshu's body was in what appeared to be a throne room. Based on our knowledge of _Goa'uld_ court protocol, none of Anubis's underlords would have dared to accept Yu's surrender in his name." She looks up and meets his eyes. "It's possible Anubis possess a form of phase-shifting technology that would have allowed him to escape the effects of the poison. He may now be concealing himself within Yu's fleet. Sir, we need to send teams to those other addresses _now._ "

He's set the self-destruct on the SGC more times than he likes to remember. He's watched Apophis's fleet enter the Solar System while knowing Earth had no defense against him. He's stood in the Oval Office as Anubis demanded Earth surrender, sat on the bridge of _Prometheus_ hoping SG-1 could pull one last rabbit out of its hat as Earth was attacked with an armada ten times the size of Apophis's. And he can't remember ever having been so purely horrified as when he realizes he's hearing this—she's telling him this—because she doesn't think there's any point in telling Hank Landry.

SG-1 disappeared for two weeks so Hank couldn't order them home. Because they didn't think—because _Colonel Mitchell_ didn't think—they'd get the go-ahead for the attack on Tartarus, either. And when Dr. Jackson said tonight it was "lucky" he'd come for a visit? It doesn't take much to figure out she was intending to get this information to him any way she could. There are personality clashes in any command. That's the nature of the beast. But it's starting to look to George as if Hank Landry's decided to pick a fight with SG-1. For not being military enough? Two of them aren't even in the Air Force. And Dr. Jackson is many fine things, but she is never going to be a military officer, and a smart commander would give up that battle before it starts. Only George has had ample proof—over the last few days—that Hank isn't quite smart enough.

And that's when it all comes together.

Dr. Jackson would never in a heartbeat hesitate to fight for what was right, for what she believed in. But she won't even try to talk to Hank about getting these missions into the schedule. Because she already knows Hank Landry won't listen. And what she knows, her team knows. That's the way it's always been. This, George knows, is where it ends. Where does it start? 

What do you have to do to piss off SG-1? 

Hurt one of them.

Deliberately.

And it's easy to guess who. Because if Hank had done something to Teal'c (and assuming he'd survived it), Dr. Jackson would have been on the phone to Washington immediately, demanding the situation be addressed. If he'd gone after Samantha or Mitchell, well, the UCMJ cuts both ways, and George suspects either of them would have happily hung him out to dry. That leaves Dr. Jackson, and he thinks of the look on her face when he mentioned the grave, and Teal'c talking about "respect" and "honor" and he's not sure what happened there, but he's starting to be afraid he has a pretty good idea. And there's a right way and a wrong way to handle things like that, when they have to be handled at all. And that may be where it started, but Hank has bigger problems now than whether or not SG-1 respects him, since it's obvious they don't. His entire command doesn't trust him. And that's fatal.

Every commander—technically—has the power of life and death over his subordinates. The high justice and the low, especially in a war zone (like the SGC) when he's ordering them into combat every day of the week. But the SGC isn't like other War Zones. Here, the war comes home with them, and everyone from the clerks to the corpsmen to the civilian support staff could die any day of the week: Foothold, Wildfire, any of a hundred things might happen. And for that reason, every single one of them has to be _willing_ to die if Hank tells them it's necessary. Quietly and without panic—if not happily—because they trust him to spend their lives as wisely and efficiently as he can. And right now none of them do. And George sighs, because he knew it was a big problem when he came out here, and now he's discovered it's an enormous one.

But he says: "I'll speak to Hank. Do we know anything at all about these locations, Dr. Jackson?" And she looks so damned relieved it makes him want to _kick_ something. All that trust is a heavy weight. Not having it is worse.

"No, sir," she says, and she sounds almost cheerful. "Sammy figured it would be better to send a UAV than a MALP when we go to look. A little harder to catch, and it can show us a larger area."

And he nods, and gets to his feet, and makes an idle comment about her running out of shelf space soon, and she says Cam says she's going to need a second house to store her books soon, and looks around (a little baffled) and says she doesn't really know where they all come from. And he says books and kittens are much the same way, and they go back downstairs. 

There's another round of coffee, and there's cake, and if Mitchell has a deft hand with biscuits, George is sure his Red Velvet Cake involves divine intervention. Apparently Mitchell's mother taught him how to cook; it's a useful skill. He's met the boy's parents; they visited him more than once when he was at Walter Reed. Military family. And George knows damned well all four of them know chapter and verse of the little chat he had with Dr. Jackson, and not one of the other three will admit it. He's sure, for that matter, the whole thing was arranged without one spoken word. They were like that when Jack led them, and apparently they still are. So after the cake he says he'd better be running along home because Josie will be waiting up for him, and Samantha says he has to take the rest of the cake with him, and Mitchell agrees, and they pack that up, and then young Mitchell walks him out to his car.

When they get there, George sets the cake pan on the roof of the car, and stops. "I've known Dr. Jackson a long time," he says. "First time I ever saw her—not counting back in 1969, of course—was when she came staggering through the Stargate covered in blood. Start of one hell of a wild ride, Colonel."

"Yes, sir," Mitchell says.

"I like to think we're friends, she and I. And certainly everyone's entitled to a few secrets. But sometimes there are things I need to know in order to do my job."

"Sir," Mitchell says again, but now he sounds wary.

"Now, Teal'c's talked his way around it, and so has she. And I think you would too, if I ordered you to tell me, so I won't. But I've got an idea that when the Asgard asked us for the favor they did back in July, things might not have been handled quite as delicately as they could have been. Now I can promise you anything you might have to say won't go one step further, but I know you don't know me—"

"They know you," Mitchell says. There's plenty of light out here on the street, and George sees his eyes go distant and his face go cold, as if he's got an enemy in his sights and is about to push the button. And for a moment George thinks he isn't going to say anything more, but then he does.

"We'd just come back from Kelowna. That was right after Abydos. We'd been on Kelowna a week, so we had seventy-two. She was called in on Saturday—urgent—so she called me. I followed her in. When I got there, she was leaving the General's office. He'd called her in to tell her he was turning Colonel O'Neill's body over to the Asgard. She was the Colonel's executor. He needed her to agree. He'd given her an Asgard homing beacon to place on the casket so it could be beamed aboard Thor's ship. We went down to the morgue, she placed the beacon, the casket was beamed out, we left the Base." 

Mitchell's voice is emotionless. A recitation of facts, nothing more. But George doesn't need more. He was never blind. He was there for Oannes, there for Edora. There for the wake. And the week after she's lost every last living person in the universe she considers her family—because George knows the Abydans were always her family; he knew for years the SGC only had her and Teal'c on loan and both of them might leave at any moment—Hank drags her into his office and tells her she has to bury an empty coffin. They'd probably already been fighting for months at that point; it strikes George as that sort of gesture. A show of force. Dr. Jackson has always responded badly to those. "I see. Who handled the funeral arrangements, Colonel?"

"I believe Major Simmons helped her with them, sir," Mitchell says, and George thinks again about the fact Mitchell is from a military family. The military has its own way of talking about things. Mostly by not talking about them. Walter always knew what he was thinking before he thought it, and George knows perfectly well where Graham Simmons's loyalties lie. The absence of information often tells you more than what's said aloud. Not the way he'd have done it. Not the way he'd have done any of it. Now to see if any of this can be mended.

"Thank you, Colonel. Have a good night."

"Yes, sir," Mitchell says. "You too, sir."

He won't. But he'll have a better one than if he didn't know what the hell was going on.

It's still early enough that he goes from there to Hank's house. Josie's used to the hours he keeps by now, and, well, this really isn't the sort of conversation that ought to be had at the SGC. He rings the bell, and after a few minutes, Hank opens the door. Looks a little surprised to see him, but (of course) invites him in.

And they get comfortable in the den—probably the first and last comfortable part of the evening—and George starts out with the simple things. Tomorrow Hank is going to grab seven Gate teams and prep them for missions to the seven remaining Gate addresses from the Simon Gardner debriefing. He's going to scout the planets by UAV before sending the Teams through, and he's going to provide all possible support and backup, and he's going to clear all seven of those addresses by the end of the week. And he's going to take SG-1's advice on the safest way to do that, because they have one hell of a lot more experience in doing this than he does.

Hank gives him the fish-eye and asks if George is telling him how to run his command. And George says it's about damned time somebody did, because it seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. And Hank shifts in his chair, and says he isn't going to let things be ruined by a few overindulged malcontents. And once he's gotten rid of them—

Once he's gotten rid of SG-1, George says, he's going to have one hell of a staffing problem, because he isn't going to have SGs 2 through 25 either. And that's going to be more than a little difficult to explain to the President and the Chiefs, especially when Anubis invades. Or hadn't he been planning to mention the fact that Anubis is probably still out there?

And Dear Lord, Hank actually has the brass to say he didn't place much faith in the ravings of a hysterical woman. George looks at him and says he's known Sam Carter since she was in pigtails, and he's never known her to actually rave. And Hank makes a sour face and says, "Not her. The other one."

And George says yes, scientists are often excitable, but Dr. Jackson prefers to be cautious, especially about a threat as powerful as Anubis. And since she has a pretty good track-record, he's generally found she's worth listening to.

And Hank gets a stubborn look on his face and starts talking about how Dr. Jackson does not dictate policy for Stargate Command. And George says: "As a matter of fact, she does." And when Hank stops and stares at him, he adds, "all the First Contact Teams do. Every time they step through that Gate." And once he's got Hank's attention, he talks a little about the Gate Teams and what they do. It's not so much that they're above the law. It's that they _are_ the law a lot of the time. They're trained to operate independent of Command—like Ranger units. To use their own judgment. To make their own decisions. They're special people doing a very, very, _very_ special job. Something nobody else can do. Something most people don't _want_ to do.

"In short, Hank, you're far more expendable than they are, and what all this is about is them telling you without actually telling you that you can actually be out the door any time they want, and you should thank your lucky stars it just hasn't gotten that bad yet. Go ask SG-1 about General Bauer." 

Everybody knows a piece of the story about General Bauer. He didn't know all of it, not for years, until the time they brought Harry Maybourne into the SGC (and lost him—and Jack—through the Furling gateway on some damned planet or other) and Harry took the opportunity to regale him with the tale of how Jack held Senator Kinsey at gunpoint while Harry hacked into his computer to get the information Jack needed to blackmail a United States Senator into doing exactly what he wanted. And that was the end of General Bauer's tenure at the SGC.

But Hank still isn't convinced, and goes on about chain of command, and proper procedure, and respect (damned little respect he's shown any of the men and women serving under him, from where George sits) and finally George has had enough. His daddy was a jackleg preacher, and he can call down the thunder himself when he has to. He gives Hank both barrels. He says it might be mighty damned comfortable for Hank sitting up there on top of his personal mountain looking down on all those men and women under him and doing what he can to make their lives just that little bit harder. And maybe it keeps him from being afraid—when he comes in to work each day—that this is going to be the day he doesn't get to go home again. Because any day could be that day, for any reason. For him. For every man and woman at the Mountain with him. For every man and woman on Earth, if the SGC can't do it's job. But he doesn't have that luxury. He took the job. He knows what it is now. And if he can't cut it, he'd damned well better pick up his toys and go home and let someone else try. He's serving in a war zone. Everyone in his command knows it. They're breaking their hearts trying to do an impossible job, and the last—the very last—thing they need is somebody making it harder.

And he thinks Hank might finally be listening, so he gentles his voice a bit.

"Hank, the one thing I learned in seven years is that the job of the fellow in command is to warm the chair and keep the people upstairs the hell out of everyone's way. Your people know their jobs. They're good at them. They get them done in their own way. And despite everything you've seen, you've still got a chance to make this right, because hell, you're still here. The thing you have to remember—and just about the most important thing about this job—is you're asking each and every person you're commanding to be willing to die on your say-so. And that's nothing new; we all do that. But these folks are serving in the only command I've ever served in where that outcome is statistically probable. And that means every person in your command is just as important as every other person. They need to know, when and if you ask them to die, their deaths are going to count for something."

He looks at Hank, and he can see it now. The fear underneath. And he knows that fear. Fear of going to work every morning and sitting on top of a nuclear device that could vaporize Cheyenne Mountain. Fear that every time the Gate opens the _Goa'uld_ could be coming through. Or an alien plague—he dealt with those once or twice. Fear that anything the Teams bring back—because their mission is to bring things back—could turn out to be a deadly mistake (and that's happened more than once as well).

"If you trust them, they'll do their best to keep you alive," he says gently. "But you're expendable, and so are they. It's no shame if you can't handle the job. The only shame would be staying with it when you know you can't."

And Hank sighs, and for the first time tonight he just looks tired. And that's better than angry, because Lord knows George spent a lot of sleepless weary nights while the job ate him up inside.

"Got any advice for me, George?" Hank says. And at least that's a start.

"Well you know, I used to let Colonel O'Neill handle all the little details. Why don't you try asking Colonel Mitchell? I think he'd do just fine. I know he's only a Light Colonel, but it's sort of traditional to have SG-1's CO take care of things."

"And I should take his advice," Hank says, not sounding very happy about it.

"If he'll give it," George says, because right now he isn't sure Mitchell is ever going to say anything in Hank's presence again but "Sir." "I always listened carefully to what my people had to say. Especially SG-1. More missions and more First Contacts than any other team. And without Dr. Jackson, we wouldn't be here at all." He thinks it's worth reminding Hank she's been here longer—one way or another—than any of them. "I know she doesn't present the most military appearance, but sometimes that's an advantage. And most of her staff is civilian. Sometimes I think we confuse them as much as they do us. But we certainly can't do without them."

Hank runs a hand through his hair, then rubs his eyes. "The IOA," he says, and sounds as if he'd like to say something worse.

"You might ask Dr. Jackson for advice there," George says. "I know she probably doesn't pay a lot of attention to politics, but she helped draw up the Protected Planets Treaty and the one we have with the _Tok'ra_. It won't take much to put her in the loop." And thank God Hank looks as if he's actually considering it.

"I take it your advice includes leaving SG-1 intact?" he asks dryly.

"Just give them their head and let them run," George says kindly. "I don't say it will ever be comfortable, but I'm pretty sure they'll get the job done. Oh, and you might consider putting them back in the rotation. You're going to be scrambling this week with those extra missions."

"Orders, George?" Hank asks, smiling faintly.

"Just some friendly advice," George says. "And now I think I'll run along home. Josephine's going to think I've gotten lost."

On his way out the door, he says Hank will have to come to dinner one day this week. He isn't leaving quite yet. He's dosed the horse. Now he wants to see if the medicine will take.

#

On Wednesday morning they go in to work, expecting another quiet day of being pariahs (though Dani's hoping General Hammond has found a way to make General Landry see reason about getting those seven missions onto the schedule for some time soon). If Landry sidelines them permanently—what is he going to do with them? She can't see Teal'c in a desk job. Teal'c will leave. She doesn't know what _she'll_ do. If the worst happens. Time to think about that later. When it comes. _If_ it comes.

But suddenly Sammy's hopping and so is Sergeant Siler, because they're prepping all seven of the recon missions _right now,_ which means UAV overflights, and the Teams on standby (though they won't be going through until they have the information back; still, seven additional right-now missions is a significant bump in their workload). 

And SG-1 is back in the rotation. (Surprise.) She'd like to feel good about that, but at this point she only feels cautious. And since there's nothing for her to do (she can't brief anybody in advance of data, and she's not a UAV mechanic) she goes back to work on her report on Tartarus. It's nearly done. She's just printing it out when her phone rings. It's Graham. General Landry wants to see her. She doesn't ask Graham why, because he's calling from his office, and Landry could hear him. She just goes.

Cam's in the elevator (heading down to her office, he says), and she asks him if he's been called on the carpet too. He hasn't been, but when she tells him she's been ordered to General Landry's office, he says he guesses he'll tag along. She wonders if General Landry is going to fire her. It can't be about her vacation request, because she didn't actually turn it in after all.

She knocks on the door and he says "Enter," and she does, and he says "Sit down, Dr. Jackson," and she does, and then he looks up (for the first time) and says, "Colonel Mitchell."

"Sir," Cam says.

And she can tell the next words out of Landry's mouth are about to be "I don't recall sending for you," but for some reason he doesn't say them. Instead he says he wants to talk about her Tartarus report, and she says she's just finished it and she can go get it, and he says he'll look at it later but right now he's interested in her theories as to the possibility Anubis might have survived the attack.

She can't look at Cam, because he's standing behind her. And she's not really sure what to say. She didn't tell General Landry about her theory, but she told General Hammond, and he must have told General Landry, and that explains why they're checking out those seven Gate addresses _right now_ and that's good, and he might still be planning to fire her for not telling him about Anubis when he debriefed all of them, but that's not what keeps her silent as much as the fact General Landry's never actually been interested in her theories about anything before, and it's not as if she's got any _proof,_ and that's all he ever cares about. Not, oh, another one of "Dr. Jackson's wild guesses." _Unsubstantiated_ wild guesses.

"We didn't see a body we were sure was his," she finally says, very carefully.

"And so you think he might have survived?" Landry asks.

"He survived Antarctica," she says. And they vaporized his whole damned spaceship there.

"Wasn't that a completely different scenario?" General Landry asks, and they stare at each other in silence until he finally says, "Dr. Jackson, I'm asking for your opinion."

She really doubts he wants it, but he'll get it anyway.

"No," she says flatly. "He survived an explosion in space and then—almost four months later—returned to Earth in the body of a Russian cosmonaut whose ship had passed through the debris field. From there, he passed to Alexi Vasilov and came to the SGC. As you recall." And why is she having to explain this to Landry? He was here. But so much of everything they know about Anubis's infiltration of the SGC is guesswork, and she knows Landry doesn't pay any attention to guesses (or is he changing his mind?) And they still don't know how Anubis did any of it. Survived. Took hosts the way he did. Changed hosts the way he did. _(Nothing of the host survives.)_ She isn't going to give Landry all her current guesses— _harceisis_ , Ascension, the _post hoc ergo propter hoc_ use of Ancient technology—because they're irrelevant to the central point, and if there's one thing she's learned it's that you don't dare confuse Landry with too much information. "I think it's possible Anubis, using some form of phase-shift technology to render himself insubstantial and invisible, was able to pass from host to host in the manner we witnessed at the SGC. This technology would also allow him to have survived the dispersal of the symbiote poison at Tartarus and—potentially—seek out a new host from among the humans in Yu's court."

#

Cam's watching Landry's face, trying to figure out just what the hell's going on here, because he's served under Landry for a year and a half and he thinks he's got a pretty good idea of the man's style by now. It's clear General Hammond lit some kind of a fire under him, but the question now is what direction he's going to explode in, because Landry isn't the kind of guy who's ever believed in suffering either in silence or by himself. Cam's actually wondering just a little if maybe they should have taken General Carter up on his offer to go join the _Tok'ra_ , because this is just about the point where Landry starts telling Dani she doesn't have any idea of what she's talking about and why doesn't she come back when she's got proof, and Cam's getting a little tired of it.

But today he doesn't.

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson. In—your opinion—do you think we've at least bought ourselves a breathing space?"

Cam can feel her hesitate. And if they weren't all the next thing to certain they hadn't brought Anubis home with them—and _absolutely_ certain none of them has touched Landry since they came through the Gate—he'd be wondering right now if Landry were Anubis.

"We hope so, General," she answers. "If Tartarus was destroyed. And depending on how long it takes Anubis to seize control of Yu's fleet—assuming that's his next step. Obviously, we can't go look," she adds apologetically. "If he didn't take over one of Yu's people, we'd just be offering him a ship full of potential hosts."

"I see," Landry says. And oh, the man doesn't look happy. But that's a sensible response to news like this. And there hasn't been any shouting yet.

"Colonel Mitchell," Landry says, and Cam knows it's his turn in the barrel. "Since you happen to be here, this is as good a time as any to give you this news. Effective immediately, you'll be replacing Colonel Reynolds as Liaison Officer to the Teams. This will be in addition to your other duties."

"Sir," Cam says. He locks eyes with Landry, and knows they're both fully aware of things neither one of them is ever going to admit to knowing.

"Oh, and one more thing." And now Cam's off the hook, and Landry's attention is back on Dani. "A matter of personal curiosity, if you will. General Hammond happened to mention it. I understand that about five years ago he actually retired from the SGC, and General Bauer took command. I wondered what you could tell me about that, Dr. Jackson."

Cam sees her shoulders come up, and knows she's about to _lie like a rug._

"I'm sorry, sir." Cam sees her shake her head, and he can imagine her expression perfectly, because he's gotten it turned on him now and again when he wanted her to do something and she didn't want to do it. Blank, puzzled, reserved, and pig-stubborn. "General Hammond didn't retire. He took a temporary leave of absence and General Bauer sat in for him. Then General Hammond came back."

Landry makes a face, and Cam lets himself smile a bit, though not where Landry can see it. Cam got _chapter and verse_ on General Bauer's tour as commander of the SGC once Sam was at a place where she could tell him things, but even Sam doesn't know just what Colonel O'Neill did to get rid of General Bauer and get General Hammond back. Probably the only one left who does is Harry Maybourne. 

But Landry nods, as if she's said about what he expects her to say—bald-faced lies and all—and tells them that's all, and they're dismissed, and oh, Colonel Mitchell, when the UAV telemetry comes back, he'd like to see him and Colonel Carter to determine the best use of available assets to investigate those addresses, and Cam isn't quite sure, but he thinks _Hell just froze over._ But all he says is: "Yes, sir," and the two of them get up and leave.

And once they get outside, with a shut door between them and him, Dani looks up at him, frowning a little, and says, "Did he seem a little weird to you?"

And Cam grins at her and says, "Maybe." And says, "C'mon. Let's go see if Sam's got any pictures yet." And they head to the Control Room.

#

It's somewhere around noon when they start getting the first pictures back from the first of the seven addresses they have left to investigate out of Simon's list. Six, actually, because they can't get a lock on the seventh, but they know (because it has an address) it must have had a Stargate once, and Sammy suggests (very quietly) that Anubis may have used it to test his superweapon. Dani takes a deep breath and tries not to think about Abydos, but it's more as if she never _stops_ thinking about Abydos, really. As if the moment when she stood in the Control Room in July and looked up at the monitor showing the feed from Jacob's ship has become the eternal backdrop for her life. Maybe it's not so bad that way. Better than a constant forgetting and remembering.

So they take it off their list (no way to go there, but Sammy extrapolates the location from the Stargate address and marks it as a place for the _Daedalus_ to check—carefully—on its way home from Atlantis). They're flying a bunch of Gatebusters in from Nellis, because the current plan is to survey the (six) places as thoroughly as they can and then (if they're uninhabited, or can be evacuated) slag them. Denying the enemy valuable resources. Or anything at all. The first generation of the Gatebuster—the Mark I—was the weapon General Bauer ordered Sammy to build. They're up to XI now. On any planet rich in _naquaadah_ it will start a chain reaction that will destroy the entire planet. Not as efficient (or quite as powerful) as the weapon Anubis once had, but it will get the job done.

They don't have to worry about evacuating the first planet Sammy sends the UAV through to. Everything on it is dead. Trees, grass, people, animals...all the way down to bacteria, Dr. Brightman says (reviewing the footage) because everything they see is dead—withered, desiccated—but there's no decay.

They decide not to bring the UAV home from that one for fear of contamination. When the Gatebusters get here, they'll send one through on a FRED.

That leaves five.

On one of them the UAV sees the traditional pyramid-shaped _Goa'uld_ landing platform, but no sign of a village or a temple. Nothing shoots at the UAV, so they send a MALP through to get more detailed readings. They'll ping its memory when they dial back. They move on.

On three of the others there's nothing in particular the UAV can see. They'd be ordinary missions, except for the fact Osiris knew them to be planets belonging to Anubis. Planets he concealed.

The last of them is P3X-584. (The Dialing Computer numbered each of them when the address was added to the computer.) And it looks like the others—green, pastoral, a Garden of Eden fit for a resident snake—except that somewhere within five kliks of the Gate something is putting out one hell of a lot of energy.

By the end of the day—which doesn't end anywhere near end of shift, but closer to 2200—they've nuked one planet of the six and sent MALPs through to five others. Cam has advised General Landry the best way to approach the sites—in his opinion—is in force. Three Teams to go through: one to secure the Gate, two to survey the area. And all Teams to be issued with zats in addition to their regular armament, just in case Anubis is at any of these addresses and takes one of them over. (Though since he can slide from host to host—invisibly, undetectably—that probably won't help. Still, it's better to be able to try something.) General Landry has agreed. Sending three Teams to each of the five addresses will take a little longer, but nobody wants to take chances. 

No, that's not quite right. _Cam_ doesn't want to take chances, and General Landry's going along with him. She'd like to ask Cam _what the fuck is going on,_ but she doesn't think he knows either. And she knows Sammy doesn't. Sammy's spent the whole day not saying anything. Loudly.

The teams will start deploying as soon as the final review of the MALP footage is done. Cam orders her and Sammy to go get some sleep. She hasn't been as vital to the technical side as Sammy has, except when there's footage to review; she's spent the day with Jonas and Nyan polishing her stock briefing on invading a _Goa'uld_ site containing an active _Goa'uld_ presence. Nyan can take care of presenting it to all the Teams going out so she can get as much sleep as possible. 

Thursday. Starting around 0300 local they start leap-frogging each other through the Gate. SG-1 takes point on their first mission—to the planet with the pyramid temple—and clears it (backed by SG-3) while SG-22 secures the Gate. No life-signs. No surprises. They bring the Gatebuster through, set it on a ten-minute delay, and hurry home. Spend an extra-long time being thoroughly checked over and decontaminated (just in case). No lock when they dial back to check. Which is good.

They're getting set to go out again (they'll be securing the Gate this time, since they took point last time) when SG-4 (backed by 6 and 10) comes back from their offworld, bitching loudly in Russian about the fact it was boring. The Russians prefer excitement. (Of course, the Russians are also issued with _suicide pills._ Which probably tells you something about the Russians.) They didn't find anything either, other than a mining operation. But no miners. A good thing, since the SGC is about to blow the place to hell.

On their next trip out, SG-22 gets chased back to the Gate by a large party of Ba'al's Jaffa, and they all retreat under fire. Minor injuries, but everybody gets home alive, and it's clear Ba'al thinks Anubis is dead and he's got a shopping list and is in a hurry to fill it. They throw a Gatebuster on a really short fuse through the Stargate. Too much to hope for Ba'al's on the surface, but they might get lucky. And she hopes it really _was_ Ba'al, and not that Anubis is using Ba'al's Jaffa now that he's out of Kull Warriors, or else the next thing that's going to happen is Anubis is going to come after them, because he'll certainly know what their presence on one of his planets means. 

They don't have time to wait around now. They change out their gear and weapons for fresh, and Sammy dials through to the teams offworld and warns them Ba'al may know where they are, and they've got one last address to cover—P3X-584—and they'd better get there first. There isn't a third Team available to cover them, and Cam looks at Landry and Landry looks at Cam, and Cam says he'll take SG-4, and Landry says he'll send another Team as soon as it's available, and they go. 

At least they _mean_ to.

Because they step through the Gate, and Sammy looks puzzled, and Cam says "where's the MALP?"

It should be here. And Dani stares at the Stargate for a minute and says "That's the wrong Gate." Because she got 584's unique identifier symbol—the Glyph of Origin she'd need to dial home again—off the MALP footage. And she doesn't see it on this Gate.

And Sammy pokes around a little and says, "That's the wrong sun. And I'm not picking up any energy readings at all."

So they go back to the SGC and try to figure out _what the hell happened._

The first thing Sammy figures out is 584 wanted an Authorization Code from them that they didn't provide. If it doesn't get it, it simply sends whatever is in the Gate's buffer (them) to a random destination. (They're just damned lucky the random destination they came out at could support human life.) The next thing she figures out is that the Gate on 584 will allow inanimate objects through, but nothing alive. Which is how their MALP and their UAV made it through. She settles down to crack the code.

And it's already been a long day, and it's nearly midnight by the time Sammy's worked around what Cam calls "interstellar call forwarding," and by then there are _three_ MALPs on 584: the original one, one containing a bacterial culture (which convinced Sammy she'd figured out what information 584's Gate wanted) and a third one containing a cage full of white mice, because they'd really like to avoid the chance they could be call-forwarded to some place lacking basic amenities (like air). But late as it is, nobody wants to put off going to see what's there. Not if Ba'al is out and around (and there's still always the chance it isn't Ba'al at all, it's _Anubis_ , and in that case, even more of a reason to hurry). So off they go (again) and this time they actually get there. There's a Gatebuster prepped and on the ramp back at the SGC (because they've got SG-4 on the Gate, and nobody _quite_ wants to leave SG-4 with their hands on the trigger of a bomb that can blow them all to hell) and Colonel Reynolds and his team has their back, and they're all in night-goggles, because it's dark here by now.

And they walk in the direction Sammy says the energy readings are coming from, and the first thing they find is a set of transport rings. "Amazing what some people leave laying around," Cam says. "Where do you suppose those go?"

"Only one way to find out," Dani says. And the four of them step inside, and she activates them.

And the rings go up, and the rings go down, and they're somewhere underground. She smells stone and feels a sense of space, but there's no ambient light for the night-goggles to magnify. It's just dark.

"Gonna use my light," Cam says, warning them. They pull off their goggles, and he flicks on his flashlight. They step out of the rings again. It's a lab. And some of the equipment looks far too familiar.

"This is the device Nirrti used to create the _hok'taur_ ," Teal'c says. He glares at the pedestal disapprovingly.

She shines her own light on it. "Yes. No. Wait. This writing isn't in _Goa'uld_. It's in Ancient."

The rings engage again, and they all jump. But it's just Reynolds' team joining them. "What's all this?" he asks suspiciously.

"A lab," she says. "Don't touch anything."

They shine their lights around. And everything's just...wrong. Because everything she can see is marked and labeled in Ancient. And they've never found any Ancient technology (not in this galaxy, anyway; and the images that have come back from Pegasus don't look anything like this). This looks like Tartarus as much as it looks like anything.

"Oh, hello," Cam says. "Looks like somebody's still here."

He shines his light over into a corner, and she sees a block of ice with a man frozen inside. She thinks: _Jack_ and: _Antarctica_ and takes a deep breath before she walks over.

"It's an Ancient stasis chamber," she says, wondering why the words sound wrong. She touches the surface. Hard as ice, but not quite as cold. Not quite.

The person inside, she thinks, is maybe Cam's age. Maybe a little younger. Blond, his hair cut short. Naked. How long has he been here, and how did he get here? The stasis chamber doesn't look...quite...like the one in Antarctica. If they revive him, he might die. Or worse, he might be like Aiyana. A plague carrier.

"This is the source of the energy readings," Sammy says, coming over.

Dani looks at Cam. "We need to pack up as much of this and take it back as we can. We need to take...him...back. Without..."

"Thawing him out," Cam says quietly. "Yeah."

Sammy sends back to the SGC for a portable _naquaadah_ generator. The first thing they have to do—before they do anything else down here—is to disconnect the stasis chamber from the main power relays and hook it up to their generator. Then they can try switching other things on. Like the lights.

It's cold down here. 

Reynolds' team does the fetch-and-carry; Sammy's tracing the power relays. Cam and Dani hold the lights for her; Sammy's looking frustrated, and that says more than words could. Nothing about this place is _Goa'uld_ -style technology, because Sammy's had ten years to become familiar with that. Osiris said this place belonged to Anubis, and he seemed to be right about all the others. And there's _some_ connection between Anubis and the Ancients. They just don't have any real idea of _what._

When Reynolds comes back, he brings a thermos along with the generator. Coffee. She doesn't even want to think about what time it is. And they all have some—even Teal'c—and then Sammy goes back to work, and a little while later she announces (with tired good cheer) she's ready to switch on the generator now, and it _probably_ won't explode, and Cam says "not much point in standing out of the way, is there?" and Sammy says, "sure there is, if your definition of 'out of the way' is about fifteen miles from here."

And Cam laughs and says "go for it" and she flips the switch. Nothing happens. Except what's supposed to happen, Dani guesses, because then Sammy starts clipping off cables.

After that it's time to move the stasis chamber, and they're just lucky they've got Teal'c here, because it's huge and heavy and it takes Teal'c and six Marines and Cam to shift it while she and Sammy do their best to stay out of the way. Cam mutters darkly about his cousin's refrigerator, which doesn't make a lot of sense to Dani, but they finally get it (with attached generator) over to the Transport Rings. There's a FRED up on the surface to take it the rest of the way to the Gate.

The lab seems so much bigger with the stasis chamber and its occupant gone, even though it really wasn't taking up much space. "Now what?" Cam asks.

"Lights first," Sammy says. 

Dani's pretty sure this place doesn't have a security system (pretty sure). The whole planet was designed to be a security system, and they've gotten around it. So Sammy switches on the main power (it seems odd to actually be _using_ Ancient, after all those years of reading worn-away inscriptions chiseled into stone) and the lights come on, and she starts with the machine she recognizes, because Dani watched Nirrti operate it, certainly, while Nirrti was using it to take her apart and reassemble her...wrong. She presses a button (standing well away from the platform) and it lights up, displaying a hologram of a DNA helix. But not quite like she remembers. On this display, some of the stuff is labeled. And the labels are in Ancient.

It took her almost two years to be able to read a _Goa'uld_ technical manual. She's got a moderately good grasp of Ancient by now, but she can't read this. She shuts it down and turns to the other machines. Database, computers, monitors. Environmental controllers? Probably.

"So?" Cam asks.

"It's a DNA-manipulator just like Nirrti's," she says. "But Nirrti didn't build it. And whoever did was more fluent in Ancient than I am."

"Small club," Cam says. She shrugs.

There's a keyboard (in Ancient) and the display lights up for her when she presses (half guessing) the appropriate buttons. It shows her screen after screen of Ancient symbols, and there's a weird cognitive dissonance at seeing Ancient displayed on a computer screen instead of carved into weathered stones. Red against black, as if it comes from some weird Mirror Universe version of Microsoft. She can guess at some of the words. Not many. She needs her notes, her lexicon, the references she has on Ancient from here and Pegasus. All she can tell is that this is a record of somebody doing something. The same thing. Repeatedly.

With the power on, Teal'c and SG-3 explore the rest of the complex. It isn't large, but there are living quarters. Food supplies. A throne room, where she supposes Anubis goes to contemplate...being Anubis.

Torture devices.

One room (she's called to come look) is...set up for obvious use. There are shackles in the wall, chains and manacles hanging from the ceiling. A pedestal holds knives, a _Goa'uld_ firestick, a small oval object with pincers at one end that Teal'c regards with particular distaste. The room looks like the product of some weird cultural collision between the _Goa'uld_ and the Asgard. She looks at Teal'c.

"But no prison cells?" she asks. He shakes his head.

That really doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're torturing someone, you either torture them to death in one session, or you need some place to hold them in between sessions. She knows the empirical logic of torture from personal experience; it's the repetition that breaks the victim, really, not the pain itself. And while (logically) the holding cells could be on an orbiting _ha'tak_ , in that case, the torture chamber could just as well be there too. Torture chambers are standard equipment on _Goa'uld_ ships. Control room, engine room, hangar bays, detention cells, torture chambers, all the comforts of home...

SG-3 packs up the torture devices. More toys for the boys and girls at Area 51. They're removing everything that isn't nailed down (they've already gotten the DNA manipulator out of here, and she's not really sure how she feels about the fact Earth is now going to have the ability to create Designer Humans if they can ever get the thing working right) but the most important thing on P3X-584 is something they can't remove: the bank of computers filled with the Ancient-language database (if that's what it is) and she's not even sure how it got down here in the first place, because it's much too big to fit through the Transport Rings.

Sammy tries to interface it with her computer—maybe they can at least download part of the memory—but all she manages to do is fry her machine, and after that, the display wobbles and shakes, giving Dani a headache to look at it. She uses her camcorder to photograph screen after screen of text, saving what she can. But there's the equivalent of whole libraries here. She'll never get it all. 

"We have _got_ to go," Cam says. Reluctantly. Regretfully. But they've already been here four hours, and they're pushing the clock, and they could have company at any moment. SG-3 is already on the surface.

Dani stares at the flickering screen in anguish. She doesn't know what she's leaving behind. Maybe something that could save them, save Earth. "You could all go ahead," she says. They could bring the Gatebuster through and leave it with her. She could detonate it if she had to.

"Not gonna happen," Cam answers. "Come on. Time to go."

Mutely, she shakes her head. She can't bear the thought of leaving so much information behind. Cam walks over to her and takes the camera out of her hand, pulling her gently away from the console. She looks back over her shoulder as they walk to the rings. So much will be lost. Forever.

Colonel Reynolds has the Gatebuster prepped and ready to go when they reach the surface. She blinks, looking around, surprised: it's dawn. The two of them—he and Cam—arm it and set the timer, then ring it down into the complex. Then they all head for the Gate.

The Russians are standing around, smoking and talking to each other. They can't smoke in the SGC because of the air filtration system, so they all smoke like fiends whenever they go offworld. One of their favorite things about their posting here (Dani knows) is the chance to buy American cigarettes at the PX. All of them are constantly buying vast quantities and mailing them home. They insist on using different weapons than the SGC standard, too, which drives the Armorer crazy. The main artifact of their presence (and concession to international goodwill) is the samovar in the Commissary. The Russians live on tea (strong tea) which must (for obvious reasons) be available at all hours, and Russian tea is made by diluting concentrated tea with boiling water. Therefore, the samovar. 

Her mind drowns itself in irrelevancies. Shock. Exhaustion. She's used to it. 

They Gate home (just a little briskly, with the bomb ticking down behind them) and it's a relief when the Event Horizon destabilizes behind them, because now they're cut off from 584, but she's still unsettled (on the verge of anger, but not quite there) at having to abandon the archive of information.

They do check-in and their medical exam (and they're going to have to stay on-Base at least three hours so the blood cultures can do something-or-other; all she knows is they took a lot more blood than usual, though she has no idea of what they think they're going to find). And it's been three missions and four hours sleep in the last forty-eight hours, and one of the missions was under fire, and that's not the busiest day she's ever had, but it makes the Top Fifty. Still, between shower and breakfast (on her way back up from the Gate Room, where they did their dial-back to 584: no lock), she makes time to go to the Special Materials Lab on 19 to see the Stasis Chamber. It's set up in the middle of the room. There are a bunch of monitors hooked to it—and the _naquaadah_ generator, of course. It's just before First Shift, so none of the techno-geeks are here yet. She's not really sure what they're going to do with...whoever he is. How do they know whether or not they can thaw him out until they do?

And then breakfast, because coffee and calories makes up (a little) for heading into her fiftieth (or so) hour of non-stop consciousness, and by then General Landry has arrived and wants a full explanation for...everything.

He'd seemed oddly reasonable on Wednesday, and even on Thursday (or at least he didn't get underfoot) but this morning he's back to his old self. Why did they bring anything back? Why didn't they bring _more_ back? What do they think the IOA will have to say about them bringing back yet another unknown alien?

"Not much, if we're lucky," Dani says irritably. "There's a fifty percent chance he's carrying a deadly plague. Why don't we thaw him out and let them talk to him?"

She's sure Landry is about to start yelling, but instead he just switches tracks and tells them he's sure they did the best they could. Damning (as the saying goes) with faint praise. He tells them to go home and he'll see them Monday, and Sammy says she just wants to check out a couple of the devices they brought back from 584 and Dani says she really wants to get started on the translation of (what little she could salvage from) the computer memory and General Landry tells them to _go home._

And even if Landry's going back to his old habits, at least they're in a better position than they were in a week ago. Back in the rotation. (Not about to be shot.) And Cam's going to be replacing Colonel Harper in the Staff Meetings, which seems more reasonable in some ways. Like so many things, it is and it isn't. She's gotten used to the dichotomy.

They're done with their debriefing by 0800. She's on her way out the door by noon (always one last thing to do, and a good hour spent impressing upon both Nyan and Jonas with the fact that _the fate of the entire galaxy_ depends on how carefully they transfer the contents of her camcorder to hardcopy and the databanks). She strongly suspects Sammy's still hiding out down on 19, but if Sammy wants to blow up the Mountain by fiddling with things while she's half-asleep, that's her business. Dani can't quite see straight at this point.

Everything seems faintly unreal.

She's really not sure how he does it (and he should have left hours ago besides. One possible explanation is that he's tapping into the feeds from her office security cameras, but that's ridiculous, of course), but Cam (as is so often the case) just happens to be loitering his way toward the elevators at the same time she is. "Drive you home," he says.

"And who's going to drive _you_ home?" she asks.

"You can keep me awake," he says. "And Teal'c can drive your Jeep over later. I mean, I figured I could cook us up some lunch, seein' as you've got pots an' pans and everything."

She's never going to live that down.

"Yeah, well, I cook," she says defensively.

"Yeah?"

"Sort of."

He raises an eyebrow.

"I mean, as long as it doesn't actually involve...cooking."

So they go up to the Changing Rooms, and she checks to see if Sammy's clothes are still here (they are) and she writes Sammy a note (since Sammy has a spare key to her car, and can give it to Teal'c) and they drive to her place.

And on the way there Cam asks her what she's got in the house to eat, and she laughs and says he knows damned well what she's got since he cooked there on Tuesday, and he asks if her bread's still good, and she thinks back to when she got back to Earth last (before this set of missions, anyway) and nods, because it hasn't been that long. And he makes a short detour to pick up bacon and eggs, and looks thoughtful and says he thinks there might still be a couple of potatoes left there at her house, so they'll be all right. And they go in (in through the kitchen; he parks in the garage; there's no point in parking out on the street and trying to figure out how to shuffle his car and hers when it gets here) and he sets the bags on the counter, and she goes on in to the living room.

Cold ashes in the fireplace. She sweeps the hearth—ashes, cinders, scraps of charred wood—into a pan, takes it outside and dumps it. (Tending the hearths and the fires was a woman's work on Abydos.) She had a cord of wood delivered last month, stacked along the back of the house—hardwood; slow-burning—and she puts on heavy gloves (splinters, spiders) and puts logs into a sling and carries them up onto the deck. Two trips brings enough wood to keep the fire going a while. She brings the logs in, lays them on the grate. Starts the fire. The weather's not as cold as it's going to get. Not as warm as it was. It was Spring on 584, she thinks. This morning. When 584 still had seasons.

Ten years ago she wouldn't let Jack blow up Abydos. But now Abydos is gone and the SGC has blown up six other planets in the last day and a half, and she helped. And it says something about her, or the SGC, or the transformative nature of Time that she's blown up (helped to blow up) six planets (before lunch) and it doesn't seem to mean anything to her. She crouches in front of the hearth, watching the fatwood kindle, feeling the wash of heat. Heat is radiation, really: infra-red radiation. And the sun gives off radiation from the other end of the spectrum, too: ultra-violet. And the radiation from things like the Gatebuster comes from somewhere further up the spectrum: she remembers coming home from Kelowna (the first time), going to the Infirmary, and Janet saying, _well at least it isn't as if you were planning to have children, honey,_ and then covering her mouth in horror at her own words. Because no, Dani would never have children. So what the radiation might have done to her then (but she survived it), what Nirrti did to her later (and she survived that too) didn't matter so long as she stayed alive.

And she wonders (therefore, by extension, a logical progression of ideas) if she's placed too high a premium on her own continued existence, paid too high a price for it. Because, of course, the concept of payment implies exchanging value for goods or services, and if she's paid and paid and _paid_ for her survival, what has she paid? And what remains? If she's paid out her _self_ (and she thinks she has) to save her self...why? For the Greater Good. That would have to be the reason. As if she were some acceptable sacrifice from Classical Myth, whose duress buys the survival of her race. And it would be nice, really, if that were so. General Landry could chain her to a rock and Anubis could prepare to devour her. And Cam could lie in wait with a sword to chop off his head.

But this is no myth, it's her life (even though in it people rise from the dead and snakes can talk). And she feels (has felt, more and more often over the last year, and the thought keeps returning, unbanishable) that this is the way things will always be. Until she dies. She'd used to think: _someday it will be over._ Someday she would return to an ordinary life. Or a peaceful one. Without the constant killing and the constant threat of death. Now she thinks reality will outlast her, one way or the other, and she wonders if this is what despair feels like, or if this is simply exhaustion. She's been doing this for so long, and she never meant to fight a war at all. All she'd wanted to do—back in the beginning, back when Catherine recruited her—was solve a riddle.

The fire's burning brightly now, well begun (the way so many things in her life were well begun, only to turn, as these logs will turn, into ash), so she gets to her feet and walks into the kitchen. Cam is frying bacon and slicing potatoes. He has a dishtowel tucked into the waistband of his jeans. She moves around him, making coffee. Both of them are a little too tired for conversation.

She feels she ought to be angry with him for pulling her off 584. Or more angry than she is. Once she would have fought savagely for the right to plumb the secrets of the alien computer, no matter what the risk. She's not really sure what's changed. The stakes are higher now, but she seems to care less. That's frightening. "I feel like we ought to be fighting right now," she says, leaning against the counter beside the stove.

He looks at her and smiles. He reaches over. His knuckles brush lightly against her cheek; a brief caress. He goes back to cooking. "You're too tired," he says.

"I'm not," she says. She sighs. The coffee's ready. She reaches into the cupboard and takes down two mugs. "What if we just blew up the one piece of information we need to destroy Anubis?"

"Then Ba'al doesn't have it either," Cam says. "And we'll think of something else." He forks bacon onto a plate covered in paper towels, slips it into the oven to stay warm, slides the sliced potatoes into the pan. "You want to set the table?"

She pours coffee, fixes hers, fixes his, goes to set the table. The tiny dinette in the corner of the kitchen, not the table in the dining room: there's just the two of them, after all. Soon the potatoes are done. He scoops a little butter into the pan, cracks eggs. Asks how she wants hers. She waves a hand in vague irritation, so he just scrambles them.

The unease she felt so many months ago at being _done for_ by Cameron Mitchell resurfaces; revisitation of a battlefield on which the battle was lost long ago. The only way to win this specific conflict is by an escalation of estrangement so violent it would tear SG-1 apart. She won't do that. It means, she knows, he holds the metaphysical high ground. He'll always win, because she isn't willing to pay the price of victory. And the reason is he never quite pushes her far enough. Doesn't—actually, exactly—push at all. He just outwaits her.

Jack never did that.

She really doesn't want to think about Jack. Not now, not ever; she wants the past to lie quiet _(but not in its grave; he has no grave; General Hammond reminded her of that)_ and mute and dead and sealed off from her present. But it won't. Because 584 reminds her of Heliopolis reminds her of Jack reminds her of the past reminds her of setting her will against SG-1's commander and winning and losing but _fighting_ —loudly, passionately, violently—and she doesn't fight with Cam and she doesn't want to think about Jack.

And she wants him back and he's been dead for six months and he'd been gone for longer and there was something there _(there was nothing there)_ and now she'll never know what it was and it's riddles and unanswered questions and she'll never _know..._

And she's afraid to know and once upon a time she was never afraid of answers no matter what they might turn out to be, but that woman is dead. She's died four times—or maybe it's five, depending on how you count—and even though she's come back each time she suspects she's different now. And she's fighting wars on too many fronts to count, and she's tired. But there's no way to stop.

Cam brings the pan over to the table and portions out potatoes and eggs. Goes back to the oven for the bacon, and sits down. They eat.

#

She looks broody and fussy and he has _no idea_ what's set her off (this time). Aside from the usual: Landry putting his foot in it, and everything about 584. He knows she didn't want to go off and leave whatever was in that computer. Well, neither did he, because she's right: it _could_ have held everything they need to roll up Anubis once and for all.

But they ran into Ba'al's Jaffa at one of those addresses (all of them hoping it _was_ Ba'al's Jaffa) which means it was only a matter of time before he got around to 584. And that meant get in, grab what you could, and get out. Fast. Because he's not having one of his team fall into the hands of the _Goa'uld_. Especially her. Not because he loves her—though he does—but because they can't afford to have her turned into a host. If she weren't so damned valuable on SG-1, she'd be locked up safe on Earth where that couldn't happen. Or probably couldn't happen, because people on Earth have been taken over before, and it would only take one symbiote in the right (wrong) place for disaster to happen. And seeing another stasis chamber probably brings back memories she'd like to forget, too. He wonders what the Iceman's story is and if they're ever going to be able to unfreeze him to find out. He's read the files. If the guy's an Ancient, a plague carrier (not unreasonable Anubis would be keeping him around to use as a bioweapon, even though they didn't see anything like that kind of lab down there), then if they thaw him, he'll probably die. If he's just some poor fella Anubis wanted to keep on ice for some other reason...well, they can't know, one way or the other, until they thaw him out and ask him. And by then, it might be a little too late to lock the barn again. Best hope Little Miss got enough out of the computer to give them a heads-up. And can figure out how to read what she got. That's probably at least part of what's bothering her. She hates to fail. Well, so does he. And taking care of his team is part of his job.

Teal'c's pretty low-maintenance. Cam guesses the big guy's had a lot of experience taking care of himself. Sam? Well, he keeps after her to eat and sleep and take a little "me time," and they've known each other for long enough he can wrap up good advice in a little sass and have it go down easy. And if all else fails, he can threaten to call Momma. That always works.

Leaving Dani.

Sometimes he wonders what she used to be like. Before the _Goa'uld_. Before she had to become a soldier. Sam doesn't know. Not really. The first time she ever met his girl, Ra was already dead, and a few hours later, Apophis came to Abydos, and Dani picked up a rifle and made a choice nobody, soldier or not, should ever have to make. And for the next nine years—all the time between there and the first time he met her—she did things nobody on Earth had ever done before. Lost things—including her life—nobody should have to lose. When she told him—warning him, out of care for him, he knows—that being on the Teams changes people out of all human recognition, she was speaking from experience, whether that's something she'll admit out loud or not. He's been here long enough to know the loneliness is the worst. Not being able to talk to someone who understands what your life is like, when your life isn't like most peoples'. At least the Teams have each other, most of the time, and he does what he can to help out there, because he knows what "too quiet" looks like, and it's almost always a bad thing. Having someone to talk to can make a difference.

He doesn't wonder who Dani talks to, because he knows. Mostly she doesn't talk to anyone at all. The combination of being who she is—all that particular way of looking at the world wrapped up in that little skull of hers—and ten years (now) of going through the Gate has put her in a kind of place where she doesn't have a lot to say to most folks. He thinks that scares her, more than a little, when she lets herself take the notion out and think about it. The idea of being that alone.

He won't let her be alone. She doesn't need to talk to him—or if she does, he doesn't need to understand what she's saying. He understands the important parts. The parts about loss and pain and losing things and being afraid you'll never get them back. And about love and hope and determination and loyalty. You don't need words for any of that. Just trust. She _does_ trust him. He knows that. They wouldn't have gotten to this point without trust. They just need to get a little farther. _Just a little farther, baby girl._ Because he needs to take care of her as much as she needs to be taken care of. They're fighting a war out there, and she isn't just a soldier, she's a weapon.

He wishes she weren't. Wishes he didn't have to think of her that way, because if he didn't, he'd have taken her off the line months ago. But she is, and so is Sam. Weapons against the _Goa'uld_. And so after they eat—dishes to the dishwasher, everything all tidied up—he braces for trouble, because when you have a weapon, you don't let it shake itself to bits.

"Think you might consider getting your head down for a few hours," he says. There's always the chance she'll listen to reason.

"Going to tuck me in?" she asks. Her jaw is set, and, well, looks like reason isn't going to work this time. Probably he should have suggested she stay up for the next two days. That might have worked better.

"Well I'm tired if you aren't," he says reasonably.

"Sorry," she says, shaking her head. She waves her hands—inarticulate—hyped-up, overtired—meaning "bed" and "guest room" and apologizing for keeping him standing around when she's already made him feed her. And she gestures at the fire and says she'll just sit up for a while, and he suspects part of the problem is she's afraid to go to sleep for what she might dream about, so he says he'll sit up with her.

And he asks where the afghan is, and she says "bedroom" and he goes to get it and a couple of pillows besides. She gives him a mocking look when he comes back and he points out some people aren't as flexible as some other people. And she says he should (by all means) make himself comfortable. So he does, since a certain amount of obliviousness is useful here. Takes off his shoes and stretches out on the carpet in front of the fire with a pillow under his head, with the afghan folded up invitingly nearby, and a second pillow ready.

"This is sitting up?" she asks.

"'m efficient that way," he says.

She makes a faint noise—more amused than irritated now, so he's making progress—and turns her back on him, staring into the fire. He's willing to go ahead and sleep now. He doesn't think she'll go far.

He wakes up about six—groggy, disoriented, but these afternoon naps and getting his schedule all turned around always do that to him; he'll wake up fine in a minute or so—and Teal'c's coming in the front door. He gets one of the big guy's best raised eyebrows, meaning (pretty much) "in a house with three bedrooms the two of you are sleeping on the living room floor: what's up with that?" And he yawns and stretches and looks over, and there's Little Miss right next to him, wrapped up in the afghan and sound asleep. Won't wake up for noise, but God help you if you touch her, because she's pretty much on a tripwire there.

So he gets up, and he and Teal'c go into the kitchen, and he throws out the rest of the coffee and makes fresh, and finds out Sam went on home about an hour after they left, threatening death to anybody who woke her up before Monday, and General Hammond is still in town, and has invited them all to dinner at his daughter's house tomorrow night, and Teal'c has accepted on their behalf. And Cam says that's just fine—he's more than a little curious about General Hammond, with one thing and another. He knows the man's smart. He knows he's somebody Teal'c respects. And he's pretty sure the head of Homeworld Security doesn't just pull up stakes and take a week-long vacation at his old command for no reason. So General Hammond is here putting out fires, and that's good. Providing they stay put out in the right way, and somehow Cam suspects that's part of what this dinner invitation is about.

And about the time the fresh pot is ready to pour—and sure, it's taking liberties, treating her kitchen like it's his, but part of it's taking care of her, and part of it's a promise to her, in a language Cam knows she'll understand, because he knew all the way back at the beginning all the things he had to say to her had to be said without words—she comes wandering into the kitchen (rumpled, no glasses) and he gets down a mug for her and pours without bothering to ask. Taking care of her is just about the hardest part of his job. Partly because in some ways he can't—really taking care of her would involve taking her off the line, and the job has to come first. Partly because she fights him every step of the way. Lots of different reasons for that, he knows. Pretty much coming down to one, in the end: she doesn't want to let herself need something if it's going to be taken away from her. And he could tell her he isn't going anywhere—unless he's killed; always a possibility, and he really doesn't have any control over that—but he knows she just wouldn't believe him. It's something she needs to prove to herself in whatever way seems best to her. Usually it's by throwing fits whenever she has the time and the energy. Hasn't had much of either lately, but that don't mean she's any more settled in her mind about him. He wishes she were. He wishes all the things that happened to her to make her think anything she wants is going to be taken away never happened. But there's nothing to be done about that; it's past. Present and future are his problems.

Around about her second cup of coffee she wakes up enough to talk, and Teal'c repeats what he told him. She frowns, and Cam knows she's wondering why General Hammond is still here. She's finally noticed there's trouble at the SGC; the reason it took her so long, Cam suspects, is she and Landry have been banging heads from Day One. He thinks—he hopes—the end's in sight, though. He's pretty sure that's why General Hammond came. Of course, that also means Cam had better keep a special eye on Little Miss, just in case she decides she _really_ doesn't like Landry at this point. Because he's not quite sure what would happen, other than it wouldn't be anything good. But right now it's Friday night, and it don't seem fair for Teal'c to have to go right back down under the Mountain again, so Cam suggests they all adjourn to his place (there's more food there, and it's coming up on dinnertime), and for just a moment Little Miss looks like she's going to dig in her heels, but then she shrugs. And Cam's not really sure whether to be pleased he's won this round so easily, or worried about why he's won it, but he'll think about that later.

It just takes a couple of minutes to shuffle the cars, and while they're doing that, he matter-of-factly tosses her go-bag into the back seat of his Mustang and she doesn't bat an eye, so he figures the regular Friday rules are in effect. The three of them go on in, and he takes a kitchen inventory and decides on meatloaf and mac'n'cheese and peach cobbler to follow (he's got a couple of jars of canned peaches left from the last care package from home). A quick and easy menu, and one they can both help with (he knows better than to let Dani babysit the cheese sauce, but Teal'c shows real promise as a cook). No Sam tonight, but he figures she knows where to find them, and otherwise, he'll just let her sleep.

Once everything's ready to go (all going into the oven at different times, and the vegetables go on last, but they'll just take a couple of minutes) they head off to the living room. She's still looking broody, but in a different way now; Cam suspects she's trying to puzzle out what she remembers from that computer. She settles down in a corner with her laptop and a notebook, so he and Teal'c get out the Playstation and settle down to some serious Def Jam Vendetta action.

About two hours later, the food's ready. He makes Teal'c do the dirty work of dragging Dani away from her project, but she comes easily enough. And they don't talk about anything in particular—Teal'c says he hopes for the chance to try skiing this winter, and Cam says he'll do his best to arrange it—and then back off to the living room, where Teal'c pokes through his DVDs looking for something to watch, and Little Miss suggests one of Cam's Chinese movies, and for the next two hours Cam listens to her doing simultaneous translation of the dialogue, into Jaffa for Teal'c, and English for him. It's pretty cool. She probably couldn't keep it up if there were more dialogue, and she lets the English slide a lot of the time (his Chinese's been getting a lot better), and half the fun for Cam (since he's seen the movie before) is watching Teal'c, because the big guy seems _absolutely fascinated._

The best part is, she looks like she's having fun, too. Eyes all lit up and waving her hands as if the meanings she's looking for are floating out there in the air somewhere and she can just grab them. He doesn't get to see her like this often enough. About halfway through, he goes to take the cobbler out of the oven. Not a pastry crust—he went for quick-and-dirty—but a nice brown sugar cinnamon crumble topping, and he doesn't think he'll get any complaints. There's ice cream, too, and he takes it out of the freezer and puts it in the fridge so it'll soften but not too fast.

When the movie's over—wicked punished, good triumphant, and a spectacular body count—the cobbler's cooled down enough to be safe to eat without requiring a trip to the Infirmary. Teal'c announces his great appreciation, both of dessert and of "this interesting new entertainment from your homeworld, Colonel Mitchell." And they end up talking about classic Bruce Lee movies for a while, and head from there right over into Jackie Chan territory, and he can tell they've completely lost Little Miss (though she doesn't really seem to mind) and Cam shouldn't be surprised by now by the breadth of wacky things Teal'c knows about, but he still is. After that, it's time to take Teal'c back to the Mountain (and he still thinks that isn't fair, after ten years of the guy putting his ass on the line for Earth, having to spend all of his days locked up in the SGC; Cam spent a week living there when he arrived and that was plenty), and Little Miss says she'll ride along, and they drive on up, and Teal'c gets out at the last check-point to walk the rest of the way in, and she climbs out of the back seat and into the front.

"Isn't fair," he says aloud, and she laughs. Knowing exactly what he's thinking, because he's bitched about it often enough.

"You're still expecting 'fair?'"

"Gotta try for it, baby," he tells her. Because you do. Can't ever give up on wanting things to come out right for everybody.

And they take the long way home. Some back roads where he can really let the engine out a bit, some pretty scenery. Full moon, and he likes to drive, just to be driving. And he's got the sense there's something on her mind, and there's so many things it could be he doesn't try to guess which one she's thinking about right now. Maybe she doesn't know herself. She's staring out the window, but he doesn't know how much of what's going by she's seeing. But she finally takes a deep breath and he knows she's going to say something.

"Cam," she says. "Is it going to be better now?"

He's not quite sure how to answer; he's pretty sure she means Landry and not Anubis, because she doesn't ask him questions she doesn't think he doesn't have the answers to. "Maybe," he says. It's not a really good answer, but it seems to satisfy her.

Around midnight they pull up at his door again. He parks, and gets her bag out of the back, and they go inside. Gets himself a beer—not feeling like the hard stuff tonight—but she wants Scotch, and pours herself a stiff one.

"Homeworld is trying to talk the IOA into increasing the size of the Atlantis Mission," she says. "The IOA is dragging its heels. Says it's about funding. Says Atlantis can't support additional people; Elizabeth's ambivalent there. But..." she sighs. "If we staffed Atlantis in accordance with the Genesis Protocols, at least we could be sure the human race would survive."

"We aren't anywhere near to losing yet," he says.

"By the time we are, it'll be too late to do it," she says. "They have to go by ship. Three months round trip, unless all the _Daedalus_ does is shuttle. And then it's six weeks round trip. And it will take a lot more than one."

"We aren't going to lose," he repeats firmly. It's what you say, even when you aren't sure.

"Hope for the best, plan for the worst." It sounds like she's quoting someone. "I haven't even got that paper on Ancient finished I need to send. I started it back in July." She doesn't sound tired so much as weary. "And it's still not a priority. Translating what I pulled out of that database is."

"You need one to do the other?" he asks.

"Maybe. What I _need_ is a year in Atlantis, and I'm not going to get that. Some of the mission is brilliant—like Elizabeth and Merry. Some of it's just the best they could get to go, and unfortunately, that's their Linguistics people."

"So you're kind of writing 'Ancient for Dummies'?"

She makes a rude noise of amusement. "Close. If I don't make my findings completely clear before I get to the questions I need answered there, I'm afraid it's just going to be pointless to ask them at all."

He can't tell her there will be time to get it all done, because he doesn't know there will be. And he doesn't tell her someone else can do it either for her or with her, because that's the problem in a nutshell: they can't.

"All you can do is what you can," he says. He knows it sounds trite and obvious, but he thinks she has a few too many people around her asking her for the impossible.

"Not enough," she mutters.

"All you can do," he repeats. You can't do better than your best, but Lord knows people try. And it can break your heart and break your spirit, trying to do the impossible, day after day, and always falling short. It's one of the things he's here to prevent, he thinks sometimes. For both her and Sam. Even if that means half his job is telling both of them "no," and "stop," and "hold up a minute here." Sam's gotten a little better at listening over the years. Running to, now, as much as running away. His baby girl is still just running away. From a lot of things, and he doesn't know the half of them and maybe never will, because he doesn't think she knows them herself, so how could she tell him what they were, even if they ever get to the place where she's willing to? But she sighs, and leans back against the couch, finally willing to let him touch her, so he figures maybe the fight is over for tonight. Not a bad one, as fights go, and mostly inside her. They're more painful to watch than the other kind, though. 

They sit up a little while longer, then she tells him to go to bed. He's not sure whether or not she'll get any sleep herself, but he makes up the couch anyway; there's always hope. What she really needs—what they all need, he thinks, but Sam and Dani most of all—is about a month (just for starters) somewhere calm and quiet where they don't even have to think about going through the Gate or saving Earth. Well, maybe next year.

In the morning, when he comes out, she's sound asleep. Television's on—muted, Weather Channel—and her journal's on the floor where she dropped it in the middle of doing something with it. He goes off to get in a couple of miles. When he gets back, he'll see what he can throw together for breakfast.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oshu commits suicide, killing everybody on Tartarus. A member of another SG Team has a stress-induced psychotic break. The Russian SG Team smokes. A lot.


	12. OCTOBER 2006—NOVEMBER 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani's a little worried that she's finally going crazy (she isn't, but crazy might be better). SG-1 goes back to Galar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings in endnotes.

Saturday night is dinner at General Hammond's. What Cam has kind of been watching for (in addition to all the other things he's been kind of watching for since General Hammond got here) is something he can see really clearly tonight: the large, Colonel O'Neill-shaped hole in things. He's never kidded himself, not for one moment, that he took O'Neill's place. That's not what you do when you come into a command this way, and while Cam's never done it before, he's seen it done. Done well, done badly. He knows he's done it well, because anything less would have been failure, and even though "failure is not an option" has become a slick catch-phrase, it's still true. Failing wasn't an option, because when he got to the SGC, the Dream Team was sick and broken and skittish. They'd lost two commanders, one of them dead and the other as good as, and the survivors _this_ close to breaking. Sam as brittle as he'd ever seen her, and he didn't know Dani and Teal'c well enough to judge, back then, but from what Sam said and from what she didn't say, he'd known all he needed to.

And it's been eighteen months and more of the hardest work he's ever done in his life—not the parts about going through the Gate; that's been hard in a different way—but they're his team now. Still, he doesn't kid himself: there's a part of them that will always be O'Neill's, and he doesn't resent it. He's just curious about it, because they don't talk about him as much as you'd think they might. Well, not that Teal'c's ever really mastered the idea of small-talk. And Dani doesn't talk about him at all; Cam knows why. Maybe in a few more years. (Ten or twenty, say.) But the thing that's always struck him as a little funny (not quite enough to call her on it, just enough to take out and think about, sometimes) is that Sam doesn't talk about him either.

Here at the Hammond house what he sees is them, all of them, the General too, remembering other times, when they'd be here with O'Neill. There were a lot of those, Cam knows. General Hammond's command style was a whole different thing than General Landry's. Open door, and a lot more socializing with his people off-duty. The rule-book frowns on it, but in Cam's experience, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially in a command like the SGC. And because of that—old friends, people who've known each other for years, getting together for nothing more (officially) than catching up on old times—he could easily be made to feel like an outsider. But they don't any of them leave him on the outside of things. When they talk about the job at all (and that not too much, because General Hammond's daughter and granddaughters are here), it's not about the things Cam hasn't been there for, but about the things he has.

It's interesting to see the three of them with General Hammond's family, too. He knows Josie Hammond slightly—she's always been caught up in the semi-unofficial SGC support network, and she's a friend of Sam's—and of course he knows Kayla and Tessa; they're a couple of years younger than Cassie, but they've always been part of her circle of friends. Josie teases Teal'c, saying no matter what Sam's told her, she isn't going to let him anywhere near her kitchen, and Cam remembers the Thanksgiving story they all told him. She teases Little Miss, too—something about a birthday party and Jell-O shooters—and normally he'd expect Dani to poker right up, but all she says is Josie can't mention that, because General Hammond doesn't know a thing about it. And of course the man's standing right there. And he just smiles and says a certain amount of willful ignorance has always gone with his job, and doesn't Cam agree? And Cam says sometimes that can be the case, sir, and General Hammond smiles, and Cam's pretty sure nothing much ever happened in or around the SGC General Hammond actually didn't know about.

After dinner the girls go off to (allegedly) do their homework, dragging Teal'c with them, and Josie says they're to _do_ their homework, and not spend all their time playing those computer games with Teal'c. And Cam is more than a little surprised when both Sam and Dani follow Josie off to the kitchen swearing they want to help with the dishes. That just leaves him and General Hammond, and the General says they might as well get out from under the feet of the women so they can gossip in peace, and Cam knows marching orders when he gets them, so he lets General Hammond lead him off to the den. Cam suspects it was General Hammond's particular go-off-and-think spot back when he lived here, and it looks like Josie Hammond has left it just as it was. Cam knows the look of a favorite chair, too battered and ugly for polite company but just the place to settle when you need to mull something over. There's a desk, and another chair that doesn't look to have gotten nearly as much use. General Hammond sits down, and invites Cam to sit down too, and Cam does, knowing that while this may be a friendly conversation, it probably won't be all that comfortable a one. And General Hammond looks right at him—Cam would hate to play poker with the man, he really would—and says, "I've never really gotten the chance to ask you how you're settling in with SG-1, Colonel Mitchell."

"I like to think we've settled in together pretty well, sir," he says. "If we hadn't, I think they'd find a way of letting me know."

"It can be a rough transition period, coming in to replace a previous commander. Particularly one who was so well-loved."

"It could be, if I'd ever tried to replace Colonel O'Neill, sir," Cam answers steadily. They aren't talking about Colonel Polanco and they both know it. "I don't think anyone could do that. I'm just here to—" There are so many ways he could end that sentence. Lead them. Advise them. Work with them. Take care of them. Watching General Hammond's face, he makes up his mind to go with the truth. The real truth. "—bring them home, sir." Because that's what it's really about. Bringing them home. All the way home. Not just back from a mission alive. Not just back through the Gate. But _home._ Mind and body and everything that makes each of them what they are. That's his job. And he'll do whatever he has to do to see it through.

And General Hammond nods, a little, as if he's satisfied. "It strikes me, Colonel, sometimes that might not be the easiest job in the world."

"No, sir," Cam agrees. It's the hardest one he's ever had. "But you can't say it isn't always interesting."

General Hammond smiles. "In seven years commanding the SGC, I wasn't bored once. There were times when I wanted to be, though."

And Cam smiles back. "I do hear that." He thinks he might be allowed a personal question now, so he asks. "Do you miss it?"

And General Hammond looks thoughtful, as if it's something he really has to consider. "Some parts of it, yes. I think I do. For others... As commander of the SGC I did things I hope never to have to do again. It's the hardest job on Earth—bar none—and there's no way to prepare a man for it until he gets there."

Cam nods. He hears what General Hammond is telling him— _all_ of what General Hammond is telling him. And he thinks General Hammond's heard all of what Cam hasn't said, too. A good commander has that knack. He thinks the road ahead at the SGC might still be a little rocky in spots—old habits and all—but he thinks (now) they've got a hope of coming out the other side in one piece. And that's better odds than he would have given a month ago.

And they talk about one or two things that don't matter much at all, and then General Hammond says it was good to have this chance to get to know him, and Cam says it was a pleasure, sir, and they go back off to the living room and the others are gathered there, and General Hammond says he's enjoyed spending time with his granddaughters, but his desk in Washington won't take care of itself, and it's time he was getting back. And Josie Hammond says, "so soon?" and Sam says, "you really do have to come more often," and Dani says, "maybe you could inspect something," and Teal'c says, "your wise counsel is sorely missed, General Hammond."

Dani adds, "Thanksgiving?" and General Hammond says he'll do his best. She says "Cam'll cook," as if it's a particular bribe, and General Hammond smiles and says "Just so long as Teal'c doesn't."

After coffee and cake, they're on their way. An interesting evening, as evenings go, and (Cam suspects) the signal of a lot of fences mended.

#

Monday's his first time sitting in on the Department Heads Meeting. He made sure to catch up to Colonel Reynolds beforehand, just to make sure there weren't any ruffled feathers there. But Reynolds says he's just as glad to have it off his plate; he thinks Cam might have a better idea of what the General wants to hear. As to that, Cam can't say. But he knows what General Landry _needs_ to hear, if the man will listen.

It's going to be a quiet week (in terms of missions), at least according to what's laid out in the briefing. Reading between the lines (either Sam or Dani always told him this stuff anyway, with a fine disregard for the notion it might be supposed to be confidential) the NID and the IOA are in a turf war over the stuff they brought back from 584, and until that's resolved, none of it's going anywhere. The mission schedule was shot to hell last week, and that's still being reshuffled; one of the things they're hoping to do—this week, and in the weeks to come—is get some idea of how their strike against Tartarus has affected things Out There. They're hoping for _Tok'ra_ or Jaffa intel; if it isn't offered up freely, they might have to go poking around.

SG-14 is going to have to be put back together with a couple of new members from the Qualifying Pool (if there are any left); Kemp isn't going to be coming back to the SGC. Landry asks Cam what he can think of to stop the attrition: Cam knows he doesn't mean their losses on the other side of the Gate, but the ones here. All the men and women who come home and quietly (and not so quietly) crack. He says he'll think about it. Not much else to say. The answer isn't more headshrinkers, and it isn't feelgood pills. He really doesn't know why one person can go through the Gate for a decade and still be (close to) sane, another cracks after two years and starts thinking everyone around him is a _Goa'uld_ , and still others (too many; even one is too many) just walk out of the Mountain after four or six or ten perfectly-quiet trips through the Gate and can't be gotten back down to Level 28 ever again by any means anybody's willing to try. But the answer satisfies Landry, and after the meeting they head off their separate ways—Little Miss and Dr. Mertz off to terrorize their department, and Sam and Dr. Felger back to Level 19 to do the same to theirs. He goes to play pattycake with some paperwork, talk to a few people. The rumor mill's been grinding since General Hammond came to pay them a visit, and it's just as well to put rumors to rest where he can.

Then it's lunchtime, and it's a table for three. He cocks an eyebrow at Sam; he's pretty sure they're going to have to drag Little Miss out of her office lunchtimes and evenings from now on, with all that Ancient to translate. But Sam frowns, and says—sounding puzzled—she saw Dani heading down to Special Materials about an hour ago; she'd said she'd see them at lunch.

There isn't anything to translate in the Special Materials Lab. The only thing there right now is the stasis chamber. So he says he'll be right back (it's Meatloaf Monday anyway, and he should know better than to choose the meatloaf after all this time) and goes looking for her. She's right where Sam said she'd be. Special Materials. Sitting in a chair, staring at the stasis chamber. Looking like she's having a conversation, except she isn't moving, isn't making a sound. She isn't sitting with her back to the door, of course. Sam stopped doing that years ago, too. About the time (he knows now, running the math) she started here and Batshit Jack took her in hand. It wasn't something he could put his finger on for the longest time (they didn't see all that much of each other; Christmas if they could both manage it, maybe once or twice else in the year if they got lucky), partly because it wasn't something she did on top of her mind. It was something drummed into the bone: _sight-lines, extraction points, never put yourself where you can't see what's coming..._ And in those days he was a fighter pilot, not ground forces. He just knew that between one time he saw her and the next something had changed about her, something to make him a little uneasy. There wasn't a new man in her life. He'd asked. And she'd said everything was fine; her new job was just a little demanding. And he'd let it go, because Samantha Carter had never told him a flat-out lie in her life. 

And now he knows just how demanding that "new job" was, and why she'd picked up the habit (ingrained, even among family) of never sitting with her back to an open door, and why Little Miss has it too, even a mile underground in the most secure military base on Earth.

He walks into the room, into her line of sight, and she looks up at him, blinking, her eyes slowly re-focusing. He doesn't ask what she's doing down here. A lot of different answers to that question. Some she might know, others, maybe not.

"Lunchtime," he says. And she comes along without protest, and since she's a lot smarter than he is, she passes up the meatloaf for a tuna sandwich.

#

If full employment were a precursor condition of immortality, she would never die (okay, not in a _permanent_ way). Fifteen projects on her desk, not one of which isn't urgent, and not one of which she can pass to someone else, because they all require her peculiar collection of skills. The Ancient Linguistics paper and the translation of the material from 584 head the list, though, because there's a connection between the Ancients (some of whom Ascended, if she's to believe the tablet she found on Abydos) and Anubis (who may have Ascended and come back, like Orlin did) and it's possible she'll be able to figure it all out if she ever manages to become fluent in Ancient.

Nyan and Jonas have done everything she asked for, and more. The camcorder film has been digitally-enhanced, each image enlarged and printed. The photographs have been numbered in order, each number matched to a frame of the film. She can see all the symbols perfectly clearly.

They're gibberish.

The language of the Ancients has, for some reason, a lot in common with Latin. This is bizarrely counter-intuitive: it's not as if Latin is the oldest language ever spoken on Earth, or even one of the first to evolve. And for that matter, Ancient isn't even linked to Classical Latin, but to a late derivation of it: Medieval Latin. Leading one to the ridiculous and impossible notion that the Ancients were wandering around Earth circa 800-1000 CE. The only ameliorating circumstance is that they've discovered ample evidence to suggest the Ancients had functional time-travel, though, so perhaps they were. The paradoxes involved make her head hurt, though. If they visited medieval London, why not modern Colorado Springs? There could be Ancients everywhere you look. 

But while she can translate (roughly, barely) spoken Ancient, the written form certainly doesn't use the helpful and useful Greco-Roman alphabet. It doesn't seem to use an alphabet at all: the glyphs seem to represent sounds, and the sound changes depending on what glyphs it's near. Which means she has to guess right, serially, half-a-dozen times before she can even begin to try to make her translation. The sound of the root glyph. How it changes in proximity to the other glyphs in the line. And then, last of all, _what the hell the sentence means._

As with most languages, certain clusters of words (sounds, meanings) tend to recur together—if they didn't, she'd never have been able to read Ancient at all. And in some cases, a glyph isn't a sound, it's an entire word, leading her to speculate that (a) either the language was in the process of shifting over from one form to the other or (b) the Ancients used abbreviations a lot. Or, of course (c) both. It's not as if _she actually knows what she's doing._

And to top it all off, no tenses.

She's working with a language she can speak (simple sentences anyway) and translate (if she hears it spoken, again, simple sentences, and with only about a seventy-five percent accuracy) but can neither read nor write. Unfortunately, the last of its native speakers (if you don't count the Ascended, who, presumably, know Ancient as well as the English that was all Orlin ever spoke) died off fifty thousand years ago. Unless they have one on ice.

Aiyana lived almost a week before the plague she carried killed her. With hazmat gear, under controlled conditions, with everything sealed up, they could keep the stranger from transmitting the Ancient plague to anyone else. (If he has the plague. If he is an Ancient.) It would be time enough, she thinks, for him to teach her enough of his language so she could figure out the rest.

They'd be condemning him to death. There's no cure. _But Aiyana didn't start showing symptoms for almost thirty-six hours,_ a voice inside her head reminds her. _That would be enough time to make a start. Then you could just put him back in stasis again._

She doesn't want to think like that. It's human experimentation—or close to it—and that's _wrong._ It always has been and always will be. Do that, and they become no different than the _Goa'uld_. But she knows she's going to tell Cam about it anyway, a possibility she has to offer up, because there are billions of people on Earth and if Anubis comes back here again all those billions are going to die.

It's 2100 before she sees him again. He comes down to her office in street clothes (one of his many unsubtle ways of nudging her toward _time to go home_ ). She's staring at a bulletin board covered with photographs of images from the 584 computer. Groups of recurring glyphs are circled in red. The chalkboard—at angles to it—has her preliminary notes. There aren't many. Something was ... something. But is that word "machine?" Or "location?" And this other group: Light? Sun? Power? (It really kind of makes a difference which one it is.) And then there's "Go/Bring/Gain"—it might be any of the three, depending on context. Which of course she doesn't have.

"Should I ask?" he says, when she looks up.

"Anubis intended to open a chain of tanning salons," she says sulkily. Because as far as she can tell from what she's translated so far _(what translation?)_ , it could be that as much as anything else.

"Well, we can't have that," Cam says, sitting down. "It would be, ah, conflict of interest. Or something."

"Right. I wonder what it was for?"

"Come again?" Cam asks.

"That whole ... place. I mean, was Anubis trying to make a _hok'taur?_ Maybe a host he wouldn't burn out?"

"It would make sense," Cam says slowly. But he doesn't sound quite convinced. She looks at him quizzically. "What if maybe having a… durable host would mean he couldn't do that thing he does? The being invisible and surviving explosions and stuff?" he says.

"It might," she agrees, and frowns. Back to square one, then. But if he wasn't trying to make a _hok'taur_ , what was he using the DNA-manipulator for? "The only thing I may have done is isolated a proper name, and I'm not completely sure about that. But this set of symbols recurs over and over. Khalek."

"Hm," Cam says. "What's it mean?"

"Well, it's an Egyptian given name. In Arabic, it means "creator,"— _al khalek_ , the creator—but I'm not sure how much weight to give that; it could just be a coincidence of sounds. I don't know whose name it is—if it _is_ a name. For all I know, it was Anubis's original name. If it's the name of our genie in the bottle, though, then he's probably not an Ancient. Which would be just as well."

"How you figure?" Cam asks.

"If he were an Ancient," she says, choosing her words carefully, "we'd be presented with the temptation to defrost him in order to attempt to learn his language. And since the only other Ancient we've ever found was infected with plague—and died—that wouldn't be very good for him."

Cam regards her steadily. She knows he's read the reports. He knows how long Aiyana survived after she was unfrozen And most people on Earth couldn't learn an alien language in a week. But _she_ can, and they both know that too. After a moment he nods. "Not something we have to think about right now," he says firmly, and she realizes, with an astonishing sense of relief, it isn't something she ever has to think about again. The one who will think about it, and judge and decide and talk her into it (or perhaps out of it) when the time comes (if it ever comes), is Cam.

"Don't think you're going to get this all done in one day," he says, looking around her office.

She sighs. "Maybe if I cross-reference it with the translation of the carvings from P4X-639. They were fairly extensive. But..."

"Tomorrow?" Cam says, and she reluctantly gets to her feet. He's right. It won't all get done tonight.

#

Ten days later the Iceman is shipped to Area 51, along with the rest of the 584 objects. (Possession being nine points of the law, and the NID having won the coin-toss.) Dani's been calling the Iceman "Khalek," since, well, she has to call him something, and she's fairly sure it's a proper name. (Probably.) If it is, it's the only one there is in that entire mass of ... whatever it is, because she still isn't much closer to a translation. Every time she thinks she's sure of an individual word, it makes the rest of the text seem even more like nonsense. Maybe Anubis was writing poetry. It's not actually impossible, though it's a little creepy to contemplate.

Before they took "Khalek" away, she spent a lot of time down in the Special Materials Lab, just looking at him. Not really much to see: a naked man in a stasis chamber that in itself was far-too-familiar. (She's seen it in her nightmares for years.) No one, however, is going to disconnect the _naquaadah_ generator from this one and kill its occupant. Assuming he'd die if he were revived. And that's another possibility: that "Khalek" found another of the Ancient Repositories and took the download, but in that case, why didn't Anubis simply take him as a host afterward? He couldn't do it before—the Repositories won't respond to Jaffa (or to Sammy, since she carries Jolinar's protein markers, and has _naquaadah_ in her blood)—so they wouldn't respond to a _Goa'uld's_ host-body either. Is there something about being reformatted to become an Ancient that keeps a _Goa'uld_ from taking the subject as a host? Is that why Anubis had him in stasis? Trying to figure out some way around it? But if Anubis, too, were (now) some kind of Ancient/Ascended/Whatever…

So many theories, and no answers unless they wake up Khalek. Or unless she can translate what little they managed to save from the database, but there's too much and not enough. Not enough for her to be able to run any kind of really useful frequency analyses on the glyphs and groups of glyphs, and a stunning amount of material to try to plow through by conventional means. It eats up every spare minute she has, and she's still no closer to an answer. There are no answers anywhere. 

The problem Landry's handed Cam—how to keep the Teams from going crazy—doesn't have one either. He's asked her opinion, and Sammy's (Teal'c's really no help here) and it's hard to say. The three of them are still sane (okay, still functional, but that's really all anybody cares about) and (she adds the datapoint silently) so was Jack, right up until the end. But there are no common denominators anywhere, even within SG-1 (it's not as if people haven't desperately been looking for the answer to this one, back from the time Jonas Hanson decided to play God and suicide became the favorite weekend pastime for people on the Teams). Not as it was, or as it is. 

Ties to the community? Family and churches? She's an orphan and an agnostic. Sammy was estranged from her family (until her Dad became a _Tok'ra_ ) and a Christmas-and-Easter Episcopalian. Jack never spoke about either family or religion (aside from Sara and Charlie, and Sara was Catholic and Jack wasn't even before Charlie died, although it was on his dogtags for Sara's sake and he'd never changed it). Cam's close to his family; he talks about them a lot, and she's pretty sure he believes in God, too (in the specific American Christian way that people mean when they say "god" without modifiers), though he's never talked about religion. Some of the people who cracked (seventy percent projected loss of Gate Team personnel within five years: dead, crazy, or dead _and_ crazy: those were the initial statistics for the Program and they've never improved much) were divorced, some have families ( _had_ families), some were devout church-temple-mosque-goers, some were agnostic, some were violently atheistic. It doesn't seem to matter. Something happens—inside their minds—and they can't live with it. That's all. The only thing Dani can think of to suggest is staffing the Commissary on graveyard (they've wanted that for years) and maybe more support staff. Not psychiatrists and not priests. Something useful: more clerical staff. Because they're all living under the kind of pressure that turns coal into diamonds, and any place you can alleviate it helps.

To top things off, General Landry, for reasons Dani utterly fails to comprehend, has now decided to become her personal friend. He's decided he wants her advice. And not on any simple matter—like running AA&T. No, he wants her advice on how to deal with the IOA. So, in addition to everything else she's doing, she suddenly has a four-inch-thick Briefing Book on the International Oversight Authority to get through, and private lunches with the General to endure (twice a week) while she briefs him on histories, personalities, conflicts, and probable future attempts at power-plays. They all know (or they all _should_ know) the IOA won't rest until it's dragged control of the Stargate Program out of US Military hands. Of course, the two main problems with that are (one) the IOA leaks like a sieve, so it would never be able to maintain secrecy (and a subset is: the IOA could probably never agree on where to put the Stargate once they had it) and (two) the IOA would undoubtedly not retain control of the Stargate for very long. Her best guess (provided for General Landry's benefit) is that the Stargate would pass through IOA hands into joint Russian-Chinese control: the two Great Powers are enemies—and have been for the last two centuries in fact—but would make a pretense of amity to gain what each sees as an enormous military asset (weapon, really, though really all you can do with the Gate itself is make it explode). While nobody's really happy with the Stargate Program being run by the United States Air Force (including, at one time or another, much of the United States Government), all the probable alternatives are worse.

Choosing the best of a bunch of bad choices isn't her call. Analysis is. So she explains to General Landry that he can expect increasing attempts at financial suasion from the IOA.

"You mean blackmail," he says.

Lunch in the General's private dining room. Technically it's for Senior Officers, but General Hammond always ate in the Commissary with everyone else (when he didn't eat at his desk) and so everybody still does. (Unless ordered to give a Command Performance.) (Like today.) 

She blinks in faint surprise (not even the fact that the—oh god—waiters—if they're really waiters, since they're really airmen—serve alcohol make up for eating in the so-called "Senior Officer's Mess"; she hates wine and they don't serve Scotch). "Bribery, actually," she says mildly. "Since they want to give the SGC money in order to make us do what they want. Although, yes, the IOA will probably threaten to make knowledge of the Program public if we don't. And Woolsey's the only one who can actually be jailed for that."

The tables here have white linen table clothes, and there's china and silver and all of it has the SGC crest. That shouldn't strike her as being as bizarre: they have _coffee cups_ with their unit crest, after all. But it still does. The crest is on the wall, too, an enormous gold plaque. It's kind of like the _Goa'uld_ version of the SGC, a joke she only made to Sammy once, when she was very drunk, and hasn't ever made to Cam at all, because Sammy didn't laugh at all, she just looked sad.

Landry doesn't look happy right now either, but there's not much Dani can do about that. They let the IOA into the tent with the Gate Alliance Treaty, and they're pretty much stuck with them now. The SGC is the gateway to Atlantis, since Space Command currently has the only way of reaching them, and Space Command is an Air Force program, and the IOA runs and funds Atlantis. The IOA's offered to pick up the tab for a full half (and maybe more) of the SGC's multi-billion-dollar (entirely off-the-books) budget as well, but so far the Pentagon has refused their kind offer. It would be the first step to allowing the IOA to actually dictate policy to the SGC instead of just...nag.

That day will probably come no matter what they do. Thus saith the lessons of history. There are days she hopes she's dead before it does.

There are other days she's afraid she will be.

#

Through the end of October and the beginning of November, SG-1's mission schedule isn't any heavier than usual, just futile. Feint and withdraw, hurry up and wait. No sign of Anubis, no information from the _Tok'ra_ , no help from the Free Jaffa. All the indications they have are that the Lucian Alliance is being allowed to occupy former _Goa'uld_ domains without opposition. The analysts in Washington who second-guess them think that proves they're jumping at shadows here at the SGC and there's no _Goa'uld_ threat out there. She'd like that to be true. She thinks it's just the calm before the storm, but she doesn't know when the storm is coming, or how to prepare.

In one way, the lull is just as well, as her Earthside do-list is enough to stun her into unconsciousness (never enough hours in the day) even with two full-time assistants, but in another it isn't, because she's getting just enough downtime to wonder if she's finally hitting the invisible wall that makes people crack. Because she's seen Vala. Not offworld. Here.

Saturday afternoon, and she's downtown, in Old Town, because she's actually managed to run out of coffee, both the Sumatra Mandheling she brews and the Columbian Tolima she prefers for her espresso grind. She's ordered more, but it won't be here until next week, and she won't be able to pick it up until next Saturday at the earliest, and there is _no way in hell_ she can get through the week without coffee. She's standing on the sidewalk, just about to walk into the stupid overpriced "gourmet foods" store, when something makes her turn around and scan the crowd across the street. Her heart is hammering, and she backs up against the store window. Something's wrong, but she doesn't know what. Not yet.

Then she sees it. Sees _her_. Too far away to make out the face, but the body language is right; a woman with long black hair in a white coat. Without thinking, Dani dashes out into the street after her, dodging cars and bicyclists and running as fast as she can. Her backpack thumps against her back as she runs—she's on Earth; it's her civilian backpack; shoulder-straps, not clips and Velcro. She shoulders through the crowd—Old Town is a popular Saturday afternoon destination; the streets are crowded—trying to catch up, but she loses sight of the woman and realizes there's no chance of catching her.

She also realizes she's crazy. What the hell would _Vala_ be doing on Earth?

It can't have been her. Wasn't. Just a trick of perception. It happens, the mind generalizing from incomplete data, turning the unknown into its nearest known analogue. In the first months after Jack was frozen, she had constant almost-hallucinations, seeing him everywhere. She never reported them. She won't report this.

She goes back to the store, buys coffee, drives home.

Wonders how much time she has left.

#

One morning in early November—the nights are cold now, and Little Miss always makes up a fire in the fireplace first thing when the two of them come in these days; properly banked, it burns all night, and Cam's taken to making up his bed there instead of right beside the couch—he wakes up to find her curled up beside him.

Not because she was sleepwalking. She doesn't do that. And she's brought the afghan with her, and her pillow. The afghan is spread out neatly over the top of the comforter he liberated from the guest room bed, and she's underneath both. He casts his mind back over the night, and when he does, he remembers her coming out. Waking up just enough to know it was her, and that she didn't need him to be awake, and going right back to sleep.

He's not sure what to think. Owing to the fact she's about as cuddlesome as a live grenade at the best of times. And they're still getting hammered Out There on a pretty regular basis—oh, Anubis isn't knocking on their door this week, but if nobody above them knows it, the Teams do: it's only a matter of time. She takes that damned personally. Well, so does he. And they lost SG-17 last week, and they went in to cover SG-8 for the Bag'n'Tag (and he remembers the first time he heard Sam call a Recovery Operation that, and he couldn't believe what he was hearing come out of his baby girl Sam's mouth, but it's been a while since then. You don't stop grieving for people, but you've got to pick your times to bleed), and they all came back and Dr. LeBeau went down to the Commissary afterward, and he'd been cool as you please back on P3X-137, when they were trying to match up heads and limbs with bodies, and then he pitched a cat-fit because they were out of rice pudding. Cam didn't blame the man at all, but he got him out of there fast and off to somewhere quiet. Because SG-8 is one of their two Medical Teams, and they can't replace any of them even as easily as they can find Gate-qualified archaeo-linguists. 

One archaeo-linguist in particular, because there's been something else bothering her lately in addition to her whole _life._ Something she won't talk about. And he'd thought, by now, they were pretty near the place where she'd mention anything that was fussing her, or at least give him a hint.

Not this, whatever it is. And the job hasn't changed all that much, and General Landry's being halfway human most of the time, thank the Good Lord (didn't get in Cam's way when he needed to gentle LeBeau down, didn't bend anybody's ear with the kind of damnfoolishness he'd have done not three months ago), and she hasn't said anything to Sam, either, because Sam would tell him if she thought he needed to know. So either it isn't something he needs to know, or Sam isn't seeing it. Either's possible.

And he still spends as much time as he thinks he can get away with making sure she sleeps. Not making her go home and go to bed, because he figured out a long time ago that's less than half the battle. Making her _sleep. Letting_ her sleep. Which means being here. _With_ her. But even if they've been sleeping together (in one way) for a long time now, they sure as hell haven't been _sleeping together._

But here she is.

And it would be nice to—oh, he doesn't even know. Because this isn't _like_ her, and that big a change in anyone's behavior is a warning sign, and the one thing Cam's been hoping for since too damned long ago is everyone who needs to will just hold together for _long enough_ , and Dani's one of the people they can't send off for a long rest cure right now. 

He makes another promise to "someday," and offers up to the Almighty anything He'd be pleased to have if He could just see His way clear to letting Dani hold together as long as Earth needs her to and then either giving her the long gentle rest she deserves or a quick painless death. Anything falling between those two would be cruel, and oh, Sweet and Merciful Jesus, Cam would rather have her with him for ever and always, but if that isn't possible, something quick and painless she doesn't see coming that's _permanent and final_ please, Lord, Amen.

But there isn't really time to decide whether to worry or how much, because just about then his watch starts beeping, and that means they're both due at the Mountain in about ninety minutes. So he unwinds himself from her, and says, "Rise and shine," and heads off for a quick shower and shave, and by the time he's out she's got the coffee on. They've been doing this for about three months now, and they've got sharing a bathroom while pretending not to down to a _science_. She goes off then, and a little over ten minutes later she's back, damp and dressed, and he hands her what's probably her third cup of coffee, so he's pretty sure she's tracking by now. And he becomes _completely_ sure of it when she looks at him and blinks and says mildly:

"If you think I didn't notice I slept with you in August, you're wrong."

"Warmer this way," he says, just to test the waters. But she's pretty much done with morning conversation and they need to get going anyway.

#

It's mid-November now, and there's still no sign of Anubis. Of course, there's no sign of Yu, either, and unless they want to Gate to Yu's Celestial City and see if he's home, they have no way to determine whether he's dead, dealing badly with the loss of Oshu, or just hiding from Anubis. By now they _do_ have solid information that some other _Goa'uld_ are dead: Camulus, Amaterasu (Amaterasu was a System Lord; Camulus was strictly Bush League). The _Tok'ra_ report their deaths, but how they died—who killed them, and why, and what it means—is something even the _Tok'ra_ don't seem to know.

Once upon a time the _Tok'ra_ wanted to maintain a kind of galactic status quo: balancing one _Goa'uld_ against another until the point where they could bring them all crashing down at once. When the _Tau'ri_ appeared on the scene, they changed their tactics, more willing to kill the snakes, since it was more likely someone other than the _Tok'ra_ would be blamed for the deaths. Earth always wanted the _Goa'uld_ dead more than the _Tok'ra_ did, or at least more quickly (Earth's policy having always been "the only good snake is a dead snake" because Earth'd had no fucking clue what it was doing when it blew up Ra, the Supreme System Lord who'd held the _Goa'uld_ Empire in ophidian stasis since the Late Neolithic): but now all three sides of the war (even most of the Free Jaffa) are willing to agree it's no longer true the only good _Goa'uld_ is a dead _Goa'uld_. 

Better the System Lords and their underlings remain alive, if it means they'll fight Anubis.

They—the _Tau'ri_ —still need better intel than they have any way to get, but when has that not been true? General Landry thinks—and Dani knows Cam agrees—the cooperation of the Lucian Alliance could turn that part of their situation around. They're interstellar _Mafiosi_ with ships and manpower and an intelligence network, and right now Earth can't afford to be very choosy. They're still having exactly as much luck as before in getting the Lucians to cooperate, though. Which brings up the question: what does the Lucian Alliance know—or think it knows—that they don't?

Unlikely Anubis would offer the Lucians a separate peace if he's planning to kill everyone everywhere. _Not_ unlikely he'd pretend to, and that they'd believe him. It would be nice to be able to think Ba'al managed to take Anubis out while he was weak. Cam's started calling Anubis _"Goa'uld 2.0"_ , which would make Ba'al, Dani supposes, _Goa'uld_ Classic, and, well, bad as the _Goa'uld_ are, at least they know how to fight the normal ones. And kill them. Something they can't do now until Anubis is gone.

Mid-November is further enlivened by a visit from Thor, with a sort of good news/bad news story.

It's SG-1 and Graham and General Landry around the Conference Room table with Thor, and Dani is doing her best not to think about the last time she saw him. Over and done. She knows General Landry likes context, so as soon as she knows what this is about (the same time General Landry finds out; he called them as soon as Thor contacted him), she provides it.

Thor's come to talk about the Replicators.

Four years ago, SG-1 helped the Asgard trap the Replicators inside a time-dilation field on Halla. Since the Asgard knew the field wouldn't hold forever, they prudently collapsed the system's sun as well, making a black hole into which Halla—and everything else in the immediate area—would eventually be drawn. This is one of the reasons the Asgard haven't been around much: they've been keeping watch over the system.

It would've been nice if their plan had worked, but it didn't. Before everything folded up into the black hole, some of the Replicators escaped (and these are the worst ones—the smart ones—the ones in human shape). The Asgard had always thought there'd be a chance they would: that was why Thor came to ask for Jack's body. (Thor explains; she carefully doesn't look in Landry's direction.) Apparently having it made a difference, because Thor says (not being too specific about the details, and she's grateful) they were able to create a Disruption Wave Generator. Thor explains it in fairly simple terms and Cam paraphrases: the Disruption Wave Generator is a big ray-gun that turns Replicators to powder. And a good thing, too, because the Replicators' first stop once they escaped was the Asgard colony of Orilla. Which isn't there any more (bad news) because before Thor, his fleet, and their Disruption Wave Generator could arrive, the Replicators swarmed over the entire colony and wrapped the entire planet in metal.

Dani remembers going to Halla and walking on a surface made up of Replicator bodies. An experience she really doesn't want to repeat, even without what came after it. And when the _O'Neill_ (it would entertain Jack, she thinks, to imagine the Asgard continuing to name ships after him; he was so miffed—or claimed to be—when the first one was destroyed) reached Orilla's orbit, the new weapon worked perfectly (good news). But it didn't work fast enough, because a planet is a big place. The Replicator "ship" escaped (bad news). And so Thor has come to bring them the specifications of the Asgard weapon so they can build it for themselves, because Replicators came here once—originated here (in this galaxy), in fact, with Reece—and what one of them knows, they all know, so even all the way off in Ida Galaxy, Replicators know about Earth. And if the Asgard can't wipe them out there, they'll be on their way back here. Probably. It also means the SGC can't look for much more help from the Asgard than they've already gotten, because the Asgard have problems of their own.

General Landry doesn't look angry about that so much as tired. But he asks Sammy what she needs to build the Disruption Wave Generator, and Sammy takes a look at the specs and writes up a project proposal, and General Landry okays it, and they send a copy of the data to Atlantis, too. Just in case.

Since the Replicators aren't knocking on the door right now, the whole thing is just a background blip. Except for the fact Jack helped. Giving his body to the Asgard helped. In a way, it makes it okay. (There are no unquiet dead, no spirits, no angels; she's the only one who rests easier now. But she does. A little.)

And so the dark spot is a bright spot, and she needs that, because worse than the fact they haven't won against Anubis, and that not to win is to lose—worse than the inescapable corollary that in losing she'll see the human race extinct in her own lifetime—worse than the fact the translation of Anubis's Ancient database (or the scraps of it they have) still eludes her, (and there are times she just wants to scream at Cam, because she's sure, she's _sure_ , if they just had all of it she could crack it), is the certainty _she's going crazy_.

Fast.

Yes, once upon a time Ba'al had an intelligence network on Earth. Yes, Anubis found out about it and forced Ba'al to destroy ... most of it. And yes, if Anubis is still alive and still out there, then Ba'al undoubtedly still serves him, and (therefore) isn't using the agents he has left, because if he does, Anubis will know, and will take it personally, and Ba'al loves his life even more than he loves power. All _Goa'uld_ do.

But.

Dani's always been able to see patterns no one else could see; it was the first thing she learned about herself, the first way she realized she was ... different. And she's seeing them now. Too many of their missions are going wrong. Not enough missions, not wrong enough, for anyone else to spot. About one in twelve. A case of their information being ... off. There aren't always even injuries. Just Jaffa where they don't expect them. Or something they thought would be there based on preliminary MALP telemetry ... isn't. The worst of it is, she doesn't know whether she can believe what she thinks she's seeing. She clings to the belief—desperately, irrationally—that she isn't going crazy. She pours over the reports of every mission that's gone wrong _(nobody but her sees they've gone wrong)_ looking for the common denominator. There has to be something. Something that will explain what she thinks she sees.

Unless she's losing her mind. Yes? No? Which would be better?

The most common form of Gate Team Psychosis is to believe everyone around you has become a _Goa'uld_. Obviously, if she's finally decided to crack, she's doing it in a more subtle fashion (they won't see she's cracked until it's too late, until she kills them all). 

_Ba'al still has agents on Earth. Ba'al won't use the agents he still has on Earth if Anubis is still alive. If Anubis is dead, Ba'al doesn't need to be this subtle. None of these missions is being generated from outside—they're all coming entirely from within the SGC. There's not enough time for the information in our reports to reach Washington and get offworld to compromise our missions whether Anubis is alive, dead, or currently a member of the Tok'ra_.

No two facts adds up with a third and makes any sense at all.

She can't let it go, and she can't bear to tell anyone. Because the "anyone" she should tell is Cam (your Team Leader is the first place you go with anything from a broken oath to a broken heart; she knows that; she's learned that), and the first thing he'll ask her is why she thinks so, and she has nothing to give him. In desperation she finds herself going to public places specifically to look for Vala (Vala gave the Eye of Ra to Anubis; Vala killed Abydos by proxy). She never sees her, of course.

Oh, god, she wishes...

If only.

(Jack.)

Jack would know just by looking at her there was something she wasn't saying (because he always did) and he'd make her tell him what it was (because he always could) and...

He was there for so much of what made her what she is now (she thinks of Sha're's blood on her hands, Jack's hands on her shoulders). He'd know (she thinks again) whether she was crazy or just flying blind.

But he isn't here, and she hates him for it.

_Didn't you know I'd need you? Didn't you know? Didn't you know? Damn you, Jack. Damn you, damn you, damn you..._

There's no answer, of course. The dead don't answer. That's because they're dead.

And then it's the week before Thanksgiving, and they're off on another mission. Going back to Galar because the negotiations for the Galaran Memory Implant Technology are _still_ going on and for some reason the Galaran General Staff (which is now in control of both their Stargate Program and their Memory Implant Technology, just as Dr. Varrick feared) wants SG-1 (specifically) to come back and chat. For good or bad, SG-1 has quite a reputation, and the SGC is more than willing to trade on it when occasion demands. Maybe their arrival will get the Galarans off their collective ass, because all the way back when Cam first joined SG-1 the Galarans wanted to swap their memory-stamp technology for Earth's Asgard-derived hyperdrive technology one-for-one, and Earth never went for it. The Galarans have to either sweeten the pot or back off on their demands, and in a year and a half, they haven't done either one. Either would satisfy Earth, and what would satisfy Dani would be abandoning the negotiations entirely, because she doesn't think Earth should have this technology at all, but there are times when she actually does what she's told and this is one of them. 

They're all standing at the foot of the ramp waiting for Walter to dial them out, and Sammy and Cam are laughing and joking—talking about the menu for Thanksgiving dinner, and Cassie will be home from school in a couple of days—and Dani realizes—flash of intuition bordering on nightmare— _this is one of the missions that's going to go wrong._

She doesn't know how she knows. But she knows.

So she steps back, away from the others, and Cam looks at her, eyebrows raised, still smiling. "Call it," she says. "I'm not going. _We're_ not going."

And he looks at her for a minute, then he waves up at the Control Room. Telling Walter to shut it down.

Then of course they're back in the Briefing Room, and of course General Landry wants an explanation. And she doesn't have one. Nobody here knows missions have been going wrong but her. She starts to stumble through a lie—lame, unbelievable—about wanting more information before going in. More time to prepare. And oh, god, for the last month Landry's been fairly human, but she can see him starting to turn _purple._ Because they caught this mission on Monday (today's Wednesday), and briefed on it three hours ago, and she didn't say a word against it either time.

"I, too, feel an inadequate sense of preparation," Teal'c says abruptly.

"They didn't really say _why_ they wanted to see SG-1, sir," Sammy says, picking up the ball and running with it, and they're all lying for her, and she loves them for it, but what is she going to tell _them_? "If they think they can get a better deal out of us than from SG-9, then Dani's right. We should prepare a negotiating position before we go."

"And is there some reason you felt you couldn't share this with me earlier?" General Landry asks.

"Just thought of it, sir," Cam says easily. "Better late than never, though, I always say. Shouldn't be too much of a delay."

General Landry wants to yell. She knows he does. But all he does is shake his head—as if he's got a headache—and tells them they're dismissed.

"Okay, baby, you want to let us in on why we all just lied our heads off to the General?" _This time_ , Cam doesn't add.

They're in her office. Door closed. Weapons back to the Armorer, but they've still all got their packs. And she shouldn't feel as if it's Them against Her (though sometimes it has been) but it does. Because she doesn't have an explanation. Aside from, oh, _Doctor Jackson's going crazy_. That's always a big hit. She backs up, shaking her head, hands spread. She can't explain, because she doesn't know. It's just a feeling of impending doom, and how is that different from last month or last year, or two years ago, or three?

The phone on her wall rings. Sammy's closest; she answers it. "Yeah, okay. Thanks," she says. "That was Graham," she says, hanging up the receiver. "General Landry's sending SG-9 back to talk to the Galarans in our place and explain we've been called away to urgent business and we'll be there as soon as we can. That should--"

_"No!"_ The scream is forced from her throat; she's moving toward the door without conscious volition. All she knows is _she has to stop them._ Cam grabs her before she reaches the door, keeping her from running out into the corridor. She struggles; Cam hands her over to Teal'c, who wraps his arms around her in an implacable hug.

"They'll be killed," she whispers. Somehow she's sure of it.

"Baby," Cam says. Frustration. Fear.

She slams her head back against Teal'c's chest, closing her eyes so she can't see the way the others are looking at her. "We're compromised. We are. I don't know how. I don't... There's no proof."

"How long?" Cam asks.

"Tartarus," she says. It's as far back as she's been able to trace the new pattern. She's crazy, and they're going to lock her up now, and she'll never see any of her friends again, but maybe the way she's snapped can still help them. Somehow. "It never stopped. Just ... more subtle. Not as frequent. Less than ten percent of our missions were ever affected at all, and I've tried, I've _tried_ to figure out what's going on, and I can't! I can't! I'm not even sure..."

"Sam, call General Landry and tell him to hold off sending SG-9 back to Galar."

There's no judgment in Cam's voice, but she drops her chin to her chest, not wanting to be here, not wanting to _see_ , now that what she thought couldn't happen has: because either she's right, or she's crazy, there's no third option here. Cam cups her chin in his hand, lifting her head so she'll look at him. 

"Why this mission? Why us?" he asks. She desperately tries to make herself _think_ , to come up with a reason, but she can't, and Cam can see it. "Never mind," he says. "Good enough. Anything else?"

She doesn't want to say, but she's already damned. "A month ago I thought I saw Vala. Here. Downtown. Couldn't have."

Sammy hangs up the phone. "Too late," she says grimly.

#

There's a standard protocol involved for losing your mind. It involves going down to the Infirmary and letting them poke at you as if you're an interesting experiment. And Dani goes without protest, because she knows she's failed Cam, failed Sammy, failed Teal'c, failed all of them. Her team. All the Teams. Failure of trust, failure of sanity, failure of intuition. She isn't entirely sure where the failure lies, only that it's failure.

Sally pokes and prods, a non-specific hunting expedition, because (so far) she hasn't been given anything to look for. She tells Dani things she already knows: she's run-down. Over-tired. Not enough exercise (aside from running for her life; Dani's in good shape, but apparently that's not the kind of exercise Sally means, because she's talking about fresh air and _getting out_ and other semantic null-sets). Not enough sleep. Too much coffee. She threatens Dani (once again) with sleeping pills, shoots her up with megadoses of every vitamin and supplement known to humankind, and (most of all) wants to know _why the hell Dani is in her infirmary_ , because all Cam said was that Sally should check her out, and, well, Team Leader's privilege, but it's a little vague. And Dani could be a lot more specific, but she won't be. Because anything she says to Sally will go on the record. Sally's a friend, but she's not Janet. Sally won't shade the truth for her.

And forty minutes into an examination that looks as if it might take all day (and MacKenzie or one of his lackeys is the next step after this, and the only real question is: what comes after that? Will she be allowed to resign, or is she facing some form of "protective custody?") Sammy comes into the Infirmary, not quite running (because one of the earliest lessons Sammy learned, _she_ learned, was that you never ran anywhere at the SGC unless it was actually urgent, because they were SG-1, and people noticed them, and what they did could panic too many people), and asks Sally to give the two of them a moment alone.

"We tried to raise SG-9," she says quietly. "We haven't been able to."

"Out of range?" Dani suggests. Sammy shakes her head.

"We thought of that. We sent a MALP through and tried again."

"You should be able to reach half the planet with that," Dani says. They both know it. And it's true shielding can block a radio signal. But none of the talks up to this point have been held in a shielded facility. It's possible the Galarans don't even possess the technology. She knows Sammy wants answers: what's happened to SG-9, and why. Dani simply doesn't have them.

"If you're right," Sammy says slowly, "if we're compromised—if it's Ba'al who's behind this, he was expecting SG-1, not Colonel Kovacek's team. What would change if he got SG-9 and not SG-1?"

"They aren't worth as much," Dani says before she can censor herself. She's horrified at her own callousness, but it's true. SG-1, collectively and individually, has an enormous bounty on it. They've had for years.

Sammy smiles with faint mockery. "You think Ba'al's trying to raise a little petty cash?"

"Nothing petty about us," Dani answers instantly. Having the mission go wrong shouldn't make her feel better, but it does. "Where's Cam?"

"Convincing General Landry you didn't know exactly what was going to happen."

"Ouch."

"Yeah. Dani--"

"I don't _know,_ " she says wearily, because she still doesn't. However, now she's apparently not crazy enough to need to remain in the Infirmary, because Sammy speaks to Sally and she's let to go get dressed again. By the time Dani and Sammy arrive down in the Control Room, the Galaran Emissary (pretty much General Landry's opposite number) has dialed in to the SGC and is requesting SG-1 come to Galar immediately, as previously agreed. 

Away from the microphone, General Landry tells Walter to activate the MALP to try to get an image of what's going on there, but Walter can't. Since the last time they were connected with Galar, the MALP has either been moved out of range or destroyed.

General Landry (glaring meaningfully at her) asks to speak to Colonel Kovacek. The Galaran Emissary says Colonel Kovacek is "unavailable." General Landry enquires after every member of SG-9: Colonel Kovacek, Major Grogan, Lieutenant Gross, Sergeant dePalma. They're all equally unavailable. General Landry tells the Galaran Emissary SG-1 is just as unavailable just now. The Emissary says he hopes they will become available soon, and the Stargate is disengaged from the Galaran side.

And it's back to the Briefing Room, where Dani learns some things she wishes she didn't have to find out. General Landry still isn't quite convinced she's as ignorant about what's going on as she actually is, but Sammy reminds him that ever since they found out there were _Goa'uld_ agents on Earth, the NID has been looking farther afield than just at the dead ones, and by tracing back through every contact the dead agents _(traitors)_ had ( _ever_ had, and Dani knows from personal experience how invasive the NID can be), the NID has been able to isolate other probable _Goa'uld_ contacts. Unfortunately, it's fairly easy for them to tell when they've got the right person: if the suspect turns out to be one of Ba'al's people, they start trying to kill themselves as soon as they're arrested. The longest the NID has managed to keep one of them alive so far has been 72 hours. 

So the bottom line is that most of Ba'al's spy-network killed itself over a month ago, and the NID has been tracking down the survivors ever since. They're pretty sure they've gotten most—if not all—of the people Ba'al left behind by now. Meaning there's nobody left to be doing what Dani's said is being done. And SG-9 is missing and the Galarans are lying about it and SG-1 was supposed to go on that mission and they would have except for the fact she ... panicked. 

And she can't say why.

She doesn't know why.

"You had a 'bad feeling,'" General Landry says (but he actually sounds slightly more exasperated than angry). "And you've been having these 'bad feelings' for a while and you didn't bother to _tell_ anyone?"

She shakes her head. If he's frustrated, he should only imagine how she feels: communicating is her _business_. "No. I noticed earlier this month missions were going bad. I checked the records and realized they'd been going bad for weeks."

"'Bad?'" Cam asks. Looking for clarification. An absolute classification of her iniquity.

"Not _very_ bad," she says (as if that will improve the situation). "These aren't the missions where ... we're losing teams. Not until--" _Now,_ the sentence is about to end. She stops. "I've kept records. I mean, not records, just annotations keyed to the mission numbers, so I could--"

"Dr. Jackson," General Landry says. (Still not a fan of detailed explanations.)

"Sir," Cam says.

Silence for a moment.

"Well, what _does_ happen?" Sammy asks, and Dani's grateful.

"Things aren't there we expect to be there—you remember the preliminary assessment of 632, and the energy signature, and SG-3 went through, and there was nothing?"

"But Dani," Sammy says helplessly.

"I know! I know! But the same thing—or a variation—keeps happening! Over and over! And there were the destinations that were supposed to be peaceful, and we'd send a team, and there'd be enemy Jaffa, and don't tell me it happens! I know it happens! The point is--" She stops again.

"Go on," Cam says quietly.

She stares down at the table. Takes a deep breath. "The point is, I could almost-- Almost. Predict. Which missions were going to go bad. It's slightly less than ten percent. And never bad enough for us to look at them too closely. And I tried. I _tried_ to come up with a common denominator. To decide if I was right, or just-- And I couldn't. I can't. But today I knew this was going to be one of them. It was long enough after the last one—they're never too close together. Never twice with the same team. I just knew." 

She thinks she'll shoot the first person who says anything about "women's intuition." Except maybe Teal'c, but then, the Jaffa don't really have that concept. And her team lets the fact she "just knew" go by—because a long time ago, Sammy "just knew" the bomb Nirrti had implanted in Cassie wasn't going to go off and a longer time ago Teal'c "just knew" the crazy strangers in his masters' dungeon were the Jaffa's one hope of freedom and she isn't sure, but probably there's something, sometime, Cam "just knew" too.

"So Ba'al's been skimming the till," Cam says, after a long pause. "And this time he decided to go after the jackpot. We can figure out how after we get SG-9 back."

The four (five) of them kick things around the table for about ten minutes before Cam decides they should go with an old and traditional (but still beloved, at least of SG-1) plan: walk in and surrender. Seeing Landry's expression when Cam suggests that is the high point of Dani's day so far.

They have a couple of aces in the hole that make the idea workable, or at least survivable: the _Odyssey_ is available (or will be within about twelve hours), and the prototype of the new generation of locator beacon technology has just been shipped to the SGC from Area 51 for field testing. Cam says (smiling easily) he's pretty sure there are fields on Galar. Landry grumbles and gives in.

The old beacon (not so old; the technology has only been available to the Teams for a couple of years now) was worn as a bracelet; heavy, bulky, and always got in the way. You could put it in your pack, but you might lose it. Same problem wearing it on the ankle. You can't lose the new beacon. It's about the size of a Chiclet, and it's designed to be implanted beneath the skin. The battery will probably last longer than the career of the person wearing it. And under almost every circumstance Dani can think of, being tagged like a zoological specimen is something she'd fight tooth and nail against, because wearing a goddamned _lojack_ as if she were _her own fucking Jeep_ is not her idea of a good time, especially considering all the security problems they're having. But since having it implanted is also probably the only chance the SGC has of retrieving them? Hey, sign her up.

Sally implants the new locators in the same place on each of them—inside the angle of the shoulder-blade, just beneath the skin. The incision is glued shut with surgical adhesive, covered over with a patch of synthetic skin. It should be nearly undetectable.

They're also carrying conventional locator beacons. If they're caught and searched by the Bad Guys, finding the regular beacons should stop them from looking further. If they find SG-9 (without theirs) they'll simply put the bracelets on them. If they lose the bracelets but find SG-9, so long as they're in physical contact with them, _Odyssey_ will be able to beam them all aboard. The time the procedure takes gives _Odyssey_ more time to head into position—near Galar (and hopefully within radio range) but not so close it comes to the wrong peoples' attention. Assuming, of course, she's actually right about there being something wrong on Galar. The Galarans could just be playing diplomatic games: they've all seen weirder. She doesn't, after all, have _proof_ of anything. Just guesses, guesses, _guesses_...

And, of course, the shame of not having told any of the others about her suspicions.

But she wasn't sure.

She couldn't prove it.

She thought she was just _going crazy._

About four and a half hours after they'd been going to go in the first place they're finally ready. Galar's planetary cycle is about ten hours off from Earth's, and it has a 27-hour day. It's 1430 in Colorado; so it's nearly the middle of the Galaran night. Maybe that will make a difference. She has no idea. They've made plans, and backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans, since they have no idea of what may be on the other side of the Gate. General Landry suggests "Dr. Jackson sit this one out." Cam says he'd rather have her along for the ride. It's a tacit vote of confidence, but it also has to be (she's sure) a lie, because how can he still trust her when she's been lying-by-omission for weeks?

Something to settle if-and-when they get back alive.

They've been on a few planets (Tegalus, Kelowna, Galar, Tollana, Hebredan) where the level of technological development is fairly high and (possibly as a corollary?) the Stargate is under the control of some quasi-military ( _quasi-fascist_ , her mind inevitably supplies) organization. In most of the cases (even their own, on Earth) the Stargate is kept somewhere underground. She's not sure why this should be, but it's true on Galar, too. From the moment they arrive, they'll be more-or-less trapped.

General Landry dials back to Galar and tells the representative of the Galaran General Staff (some anonymous flunky this time) SG-1 is ready to come through.

They step through the Stargate into the Galaran Gate Room.

The Emissary isn't here to greet them (though he was available just a few hours ago): the man waiting at the foot of the steps (all by himself, and that's odd too: the Galarans generally put on more of a show) identifies himself as Dr. Batti, advisor to the General Staff. He's no one they've ever met, and he's never been mentioned in SG-9's reports. The name would normally be good for at least a raised eyebrow from Cam, but not today. 

They start with the obvious: asking to see SG-9, since after all, if they're here now, SG-9 can go home. The _Odyssey_ is still six to eight hours out, but they've stalled for longer when they've had to. Dr. Batti repeats that they're "unavailable," and that's their first clue (next clue) something's rotten in the state of Galar. Cam really isn't willing to accept the non-explanation. They walk down the steps, with Cam still talking (friendly, easy) about how he's sure Colonel Kovacek would like to take his team and get on home, and Dr. Batti starts backing away, obviously trying to keep distance between him and them.

She's at the back of their party, her usual place if they think they're heading into trouble. Sammy touches her arm and (when Dani looks at her) drops her chin, just a fraction. A gesture Dani's seen from Jacob Carter hundreds of times since he became a _Tok'ra_ , when he was switching dominance with his symbiote.

The _naquaadah_ in Sammy's blood resonates with the _naquadaah_ in the blood of those around her. In Teal'c's. In Dr. Batti's. _< "Snake,">_" Dani says aloud. She's fairly sure the _Goa'uld_ don't know Chinese.

Cam's hands are at his sides. He raises two fingers, so she knows he's heard her, but she sees him decide not to act on the information immediately. They let Dr. Batti back off, far enough away so neither Sammy nor Teal'c can sense him for what he is. Cam changes tack, asking to see the Emissary, saying (lying cheerfully) Earth is willing to trade its hyperdrive technology for the Galaran memory technology if the Galarans will throw in some _naquaadah_ and maybe a little trinium. "I've got the details right here somewhere, you know I'm sure I wrote the figures down before I left home..." Cam starts patting himself down in the universal gesture of "Man Looking For Something In His Pockets".

Dr. Batti says the exact information isn't immediately necessary. He's sure Colonel Mitchell will remember the figures, given time. And Cam's saying no, no, no, he's sure he's got the paper right here, and don't it just drive you crazy when you can't find something you know you packed? And they're all spreading out now, making it impossible for the snake to keep track of all of them at once. It's doing just what they want, backing and turning, giving Cam a clear shot at the door.

And Cam sprints over to it, slapping the control to open it and then flinging himself back against the wall. Sammy dashes toward the other side of the door, and Dani just goes straight down to the floor, since there's no other cover. Teal'c racks his staff-weapon and fires before the door is quite open, and his first blast takes one of the waiting Jaffa in the chest, and then everybody's firing, and she can't roll onto her back with her pack in the way, but Cam and Sammy and Teal'c are all firing out into the hall and Snake-Batti is reaching for something in its jacket and Dani hauls out her Beretta and puts three rounds into its stomach, which distracts it. The snake drops the ribbon device to the floor.

And by then everybody else has stopped shooting, and the Jaffa are either dead or fled, and Teal'c hauls her to her feet and goes to pick up Batti, and they run.

She glances back into the Galaran Gate Room as they do. The DHD is slagged and smoking, casualty of a stray staff-blast.

Ooops.

Good thing they've already lined up a ride home. 

The corridor outside is empty, though the Galaran Staff Headquarters has always been pretty active whenever she's been here. They're six levels below the street. Access to the levels above is by elevator. There are no stairs. If the Galarans have found their Stargate (as they have) and been working with recovered _Goa'uld_ technology (as they have), they probably have a Ring Platform or two somewhere, too, but she's never seen any sign of one. It occurs to her suddenly—she stumbles and nearly falls, but forces herself to keep running—they've been sending SG-9 to the Galarans for almost a year and a half, and they know the Galarans have virtually-undetectable memory-editing technology. The _Goa'uld_ may have been here for months. How do they know SG-9 has _ever_ come home having experienced what it thought it had?

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck._

A security alert starts to sound—a constant high gonging sound—and the lights in the corridors flash blue. Batti is starting to rouse, snarling threats in _Goa'uld_. They probably won't be able to get out of here using the elevators now. Cam finds an unoccupied room (looks like an office) and they all duck inside. Cam makes a "lock it up" motion and Teal'c tosses her his zat. She zaps the lock mechanism, and it sparks and sizzles. That should at least slow down anybody trying to get in.

Teal'c tosses the _Goa'uld_ into a chair. It's covered in blood, and if it were human, three 9mm slugs to the gut at close range would have killed it. But the bleeding's already stopped. _Goa'uld_ strength could shear through the regular security restraints they carry, but R &D has come up with a new generation of quick-ties they're pretty sure are _Goa'uld_ -proof. They use them to tie whoever's wearing Batti's body to the chair, wrists and ankles both. Teal'c tears "Batti's" shirt and jacket open and the bullets drop to the floor: the _Goa'uld_ has already worked them out to the surface of the flesh. "Batti" is carrying a _Goa'uld_ communicator; Teal'c sets it on the desk. 

"Okay, now I'm going to ask again. Where's SG-9?" Cam says.

"Fools! Release me, and perhaps Lord Ba'al will be merciful!" Its eyes flash as it snarls.

"Really not the answer we were looking for," Cam says.

"I shall elicit truth from the creature," Teal'c says.

Dani passes him her knife. It's all for show. They can't really hurt the snake; it will just hide behind its host. And none of them really has the stomach for torture. Besides (she knows, fireside conversations half a lifetime ago), it's inefficient. You don't get useful information through torture, unless you break a subject so thoroughly they cooperate voluntarily. That takes days if it can be done at all. Jack told her once everyone breaks. That there's no shame in it. That the best you can hope for is to delay as long as possible. She doesn't know (had never known; Jack didn't talk about his past) whether he was speaking from personal experience, or telling an impersonal truth, or if it was a soothing lie, something she could use to excuse herself when the time came (as it would) she was captured, and tortured, and talked. But she does know—and this is truth—it's neither quick nor easy.

"Oh, Powers, _please!_ Don't hurt me! Please! I don't know anything! I don't know where your friends are! You have to believe me!" The face of the man in the chair contorts in terror. He begins to cry.

"It's still the _Goa'uld_ ," Dani says quietly.

"I got that," Cam answers steadily.

"We need to know where SG-9 is," she says, holding the creature's eyes. She knows she's talking to the _Goa'uld_ , but she knows the host can hear her too. "We can help you. We have allies who can remove the _Goa'uld_ and save you. But we need to know what happened to our people." Then she raises the zat and fires.

The _Goa'uld_ are monsters, but they're cowards. Aboard Apophis's mothership, Klorel lost his hold over Skaara when Skaara was zatted; they retreat from pain. Its body thrashes and it screams. The restraints hold.

"Oh, Powers, I don't _know!_ The--" Batti writhes, gags, trying to talk, trying to keep silent. "You will never find them," the _Goa'uld_ says. Its eyes flare again. "Beg me for your lives and I will let you live."

She looks at Cam and Sammy. Sammy shrugs and half-smiles, Cam shakes his head, looking unimpressed. "No," she says.

"I do not believe it will tell us what we wish to know without additional persuasion," Teal'c says regretfully.

"Pretty sure it isn't Ba'al," she adds.

"Guess we're done here," Cam says. "Finish up."

Teal'c hands back her knife. She gives him back his zat. They get to work.

She always carries spare socks with her, because you never know when you'll need them. She digs them out of her pack now, and (with Teal'c's help) shoves one into the _Goa'uld's_ mouth. She carries duct tape, too (same reason), and wraps it around the snake's head, using it to hold the improvised gag in place. It won't be able to call out now. Meanwhile, Cam and Sammy are standing on the desk. The room has a dropped ceiling; Sammy is able to pry one of the panels loose. She climbs up inside, pokes her head back down, nods. She's found an exit point.

The SGC is a mile underground. The SGC's air ducts are their least-secure point; large enough to admit a body. They have to be, to move the volume of air they need to move. The Galarans are roughly at Earth's level of development. The Galaran Stargate is six stories underground: they've gambled on the fact the Galaran facility would have the same physical requirements, and apparently it does.

They pull off their packs and vests, bundle them together; they'll be able to get through the ducts, but not wearing their packs; they can push them ahead of them. Cam boosts Teal'c up first. The ceiling panels creak alarmingly with his weight, but they hold. After a few seconds, they stop creaking. He's in.

Someone's pounding on the door, trying to open it.

Cam helps Sammy up next, and lifts their packs up to her. He goes next (heavier, needs more help to get up), using Dani as a stepladder, carefully placing his feet—thigh, shoulder—as she crouches on the desk. Then he turns back and simply lifts her up into the ceiling.

About forty minutes later they've made it to the level above. No blue lights here, but it's a safe bet the _Goa'uld_ they left tied up has been rescued, and therefore the bad guys know SG-1's somewhere in the building. The whole point of the exercise now is to waste another six hours or so (of Ba'al's time, if not theirs) and also to find out for sure what's happened to SG-9. If they can.

Dani knows Sammy wants to find a computer access point. They haven't been able to talk while they were in the duct system—voices carry—but they don't need to: Sammy _always_ wants to find a computer system, and it's a good place to look for information. They make their way down out of the vent-system (same method they used going in, just in reverse, and they put the ceiling panel back into place this time, covering their tracks as much as possible). They're in another office. Closer to the Stargate should mean more important, but it's hard to tell; it's not as if anything down here is using cultural cues any of them is familiar with. And Dani can't read written Galaran, so even though the desk is filled with papers, they aren't really helpful. It probably _does_ belong to a higher functionary, though, because there's no computer; what they really need is Mister Important's secretary's office. They open the door (carefully) and there's another office outside. This one has a computer. Sammy pulls out her laptop.

"Wait," Cam says. "Once you start, they'll know you're there, right?"

Sammy nods. "They should. We would."

"And what's the soonest _Odyssey_ can be here?"

"Maybe another five hours, if they come at top speed. General Landry won't have heard back from us, so ... they will," Sammy replies. They were supposed to check back in immediately upon arrival, if everything was okay here. And, of course, they were supposed to send SG-9 home.

"And Colonel Emerson's been ordered to grab us the moment they're within range," Cam says. Because that's the fallback plan. Hard to come up with one that covers every contingency when they had no idea of whether they were walking into trouble or just her paranoia, but they did their best. "So ... okay. Let's try to get out of here—out into the city—before we try to hook into their computer net. Give us a few more options."

"Cam, we're in the Staff Headquarters. I'm not sure I can get into the right systems from outside it," Sammy says.

Cam smiles cheerfully. "You remember Reya Varrick?"

"Sure. She was the lead scientist on their memory-transfer project," Sammy says.

"And she wanted you to go home with her," Dani mutters darkly.

"Sure she did," Cam says, turning to her. "And according to Colonel Kovacek, she's still involved with the project, and dollars to doughnuts she can get into the system here from her home."

"And you know where that is," Dani says dubiously.

"Couple blocks from here," Cam says. "She told me. And I, ah, remember how to get there." The reception from which Cam almost-but-not-quite went home with Dr. Varrick was held on the grounds of the Staff Headquarters, and when the Galarans were first offering Earth the memory technology, they gave them a sample. Cam remembers doing something he never did, and as a result, he can take them to Dr. Varrick's. If they can get out of here.

It isn't easy. The closer they get to the surface, the more people there are around. Most of them are Galaran Security Forces, but some of them are Jaffa in full armor. Still, SG-1 has sneaked and run and hidden across half the galaxy. It's easier once they manage to change out their clothes and weapons. They can't find a Galaran uniform to fit Teal'c, but they can find Jaffa armor. He doesn't look happy to be wearing "the raiment of the False Gods" again, but he never does. It helps that they look as if they know where they're going, and act as if they belong here. And nobody looks twice at a Serpent Guard and three Galaran SFs, which gives them a sobering idea of just how thoroughly Galar has been taken over.

"This isn't normal," she says in a low voice.

"Indeed it is not," Teal'c says. "When the _Goa'uld_ conquer a world at an advanced state of development, they destroy it. They do not preserve it."

"Maybe these folks don't know they've been conquered yet," Cam says slowly.

The ground floor of Staff Headquarters is a spacious open-plan lobby that looks more like an office building's atrium than the entry level of something containing the Stargate. It's the middle of the Galaran night, but the space is filled with people: armored Jaffa, Galaran security forces, _Goa'uld_. Sammy stays close to Teal'c: if anyone senses _naquaadah_ , they'll assume (Dani really hopes) it's coming from him, rather than from her.

They're approaching the inner set of doors to the outside, when the outer set open. Six Jaffa come striding in with a small dark-haired woman in their midst. She looks terrified.

They try to move, to get out of the way, to not be seen, but it's too late. "Cameron!" Reya Varrick says, and she's looking right at them. _"Colonel Mitchell!"_

#

"Did you really think you could just come to one of my planets and do exactly as you pleased?"

Another _ha'tak_ , another dungeon. 

"That was the plan," Cam says, and he actually sounds as if he's trying to be helpful.

Cam and Teal'c are suspended from the ceiling by chains. Ba'al's Jaffa have already tried to remove Teal'c's _prim'ta_ , and seem both puzzled and indignant to find he isn't carrying one. She and Sammy are shackled to the back wall. Roughed up a bit, but not too bad. Not yet. And Dani's really hoping these new transponders can survive the charge from a _Goa'uld_ firestick, because Cam and Teal'c have already been hit a couple of times each, and Ba'al's just warming up.

She's hated many of the _Goa'uld_ she's helped to kill (Ra, Apophis, Hathor, Sokar) with a personal passion she thinks only Teal'c understands, but Ba'al is different. Because after the thing with Kanan was all over, after Jack was cleared by MacKenzie and General Hammond and they were back in the field (when they were limping home from their disastrous vacation to Halla, battered and aching and not sure SG-1 could survive this mission, though more and merrier was yet to come that year), Jack told her some of what had happened. Knowing was better than imagining, wondering what the sarcophagus had erased, wondering what was too bad for him to tell her (because she knows the _Goa'uld_ much too well; sometimes she wakes up in the darkness, throat tense and aching, and knows she's been speaking the language of serpents in her sleep), but knowing had left her with new nightmares and a hatred as absolute as compass north. (And Jack told her it was nothing personal with Ba'al, and she doesn't know if he ever understood it was for just that reason she hated Ba'al, hated all of them.) From the time she helped kill Ra to now, hatred has never left any place for fear before (she fears what the _Goa'uld_ can do, she doesn't fear _them_ ), but as she looks at the figure of five years of nightmares (and if she could have seen the future, there at the Summit, she would have broken open the poison vials and killed them all because she thinks even Simon would have thanked her for it), she thinks she's afraid of Ba'al and not just of pain and failure and death, because Ba'al is different from the others. He's smart, and he thinks, and he doesn't follow the traditional _Goa'uld_ way of doing things. Their love of tactics and strategies that have worked for uncounted millennia has been Earth's greatest weapon in this war. They've been slow to change and adapt, and so the _Tau'ri_ (fast, adaptable, reckless) have swept through their Empire, destroying the work of tens of thousands of centuries in a few short years. If the _Goa'uld_ (if _Ba'al_ ) become as adaptable as their enemies are, Earth loses its only advantage.

"It didn't work," Ba'al says. He smiles, and touches Cam again with the firestick. Cam holds out as long as he can, but then he has to scream. "Now. You _will_ tell me what I want to know."

"We will tell you nothing, _onac,_ " Teal'c says. That gets him Ba'al's attention. That's the point. Giving Cam time to recover.

"Aren't you supposed to promise us mercy?" That's her contribution, and oh, god, she'd really rather keep her mouth shut, but the longer they can keep Ba'al bouncing ( _bouncing ball_ her mind helpfully supplies, and she tells it to _shut the fuck up in there_ ) around among them, the better. He comes walking over to her and wrenches her chin up. Her glasses are long gone, of course, but he's close enough for her to see him clearly. Too close. 

"I am a god. I need promise nothing," he says. Ba'al was (is?) a Caananite storm god, one of the most ancient deities of Earth. He gazes into her eyes, and she knows it's an article of _Goa'uld_ doctrine that they know everything, but he looks almost puzzled for a moment. The moment passes. "I've seen you before," he says. "You were that fool Yu's _lo'tar_."

"How-- How is the old boy?" Cam asks. His voice is ragged, and he's still gasping for air, but he wants Ba'al's attention back on him.

"Show respect to your gods, _Tau'ri_ ," Ba'al says mildly. He lets go of her, turning back toward Cam, and she's starting to breathe freely again when he reaches back—oh-so-casually—and touches her ribs with the firestick.

She isn't prepared for it. Her head slams back against the bulkhead and she bites her tongue and screams. "Very nice," Ba'al says. "You show promise."

"Where's SG-9?" Sammy says. Her turn now. Dani spits blood and tries to breathe.

"There are so many interesting answers to that question," Ba'al replies. "They might be dead. They might have become divine. They might be on some other planet with no memory at all of who they are—the Galarans, you know, have adapted our _za'tarc_ technology in a rather intriguing way. But perhaps you aren't familiar with it?"

"We are," Sammy says. It sounds as if she's talking through gritted teeth.

"Ah. Excellent. Then you know you have no way of knowing if it's been used on you. And I am certain—being the noble creatures you are—you'd rather die than inflict harm on your fellow _Tau'ri_. That can be arranged. Simply tell me who your spy in Anubis's court is, and I will kill you all."

"Lost us there," Cam says. He's breathing a little easier now.

"Don't insult my intelligence," Ba'al says, and he's got them chained up, he's torturing them, he may have turned them all into _za'tarcs_ and he still sounds pissy.

"There is no spy," Teal'c says. That wins him an extended period of Ba'al's attention; Teal'c's _shol'va_ , and Ba'al considers his existence a personal insult. And Dani's trying to think: _why_ does Ba'al think they have a spy? He's the one who's been spying on _them_.

"You want to know how we found Anubis's secret bases," she says. She knows Sammy is glaring at her—and Cam would be if he weren't chained up with his back to her—but she needs to buy them all time. And that has to be it.

_"Yes!"_ Ba'al says, turning around and walking back to face her again. "Finally! Some glimmer of intelligence. I was beginning to despair of you."

"Osiris traded us the information in exchange for his life." Oh, god, she doesn't know if this will work. She hasn't had time to plan this out carefully. The only thing she's sure of is that the _Goa'uld_ don't have spies among the _Tok'ra_.

"You can't possibly expect me to believe that," Ba'al says.

"Suit yourself. You have spies in the SGC. But they don't get everything."

"Dani, shut up!" Cam shouts.

"Now why shouldn't I—oh, what _is_ your so-charming term for it? Yes. Stick a snake in your head and find out everything you know. Including whether you're telling me the truth right now."

"Galaran memory technology," she says instantly. "Excised memories are unrecoverable. We've been negotiating for it for over a year. They offered us a lot of free samples."

"Goddammit!" Cam shouts, sounding desperate. "Don't listen to her!"

"Dani, you can't do this," Sammy begs. Ba'al touches Sammy with the firestick, almost absently. That's really the worst part of all this; he hurts them so terribly and so casually.

"I can!" she says, shouting over the sound of Sammy's scream. She's only told one lie: that Osiris is alive. And it's true he tried to bargain.

"And was he the only one?" Ba'al asks. He removes the firestick from Sammy's side and returns to her. He strokes her cheek almost affectionately. She swallows hard against the bile rising up in her throat. The combination of hate and fear make her lightheaded.

"You know the others are dead." She keeps her voice even with an effort. Oshu is dead, and whoever Oshu got his information from was almost certainly on Tartarus.

"Still," Ba'al says, and he almost—almost!—sounds regretful. "I'm not letting any of you go. Not yet. You're too valuable." He looks around the chamber, hefting the firestick in his hand. She closes her eyes, certain she's going to get hit with it again. But he just walks over to a table and sets it down.

"Watch them," he says to the Jaffa standing inside the doorway. He sweeps out, and when he's gone the atmosphere somehow seems cleaner.

Even with him gone, they can't talk among themselves, or at least not freely, because the Jaffa are right there. And even if the _Goa'uld_ light their ships with torches, they still have intra-ship communicators, and Ba'al could easily use them to eavesdrop on his torture chamber. Her ribs ache and her head aches and her shoulders ache from the position her arms are forced into and she'd like to be feeling sorry for herself right now except for the fact Cam and Teal'c are in worse shape, and they're still hours away from rescue, and rescue is only going to work if the _ha'tak_ stays in orbit (and if _Odyssey_ can reach them through its shields), and they could all still end up as hosts or dead and it's possible they've all already been turned into _za'tarcs_ , though she thinks that's only an outside possibility since Ba'al obviously has no intention of letting them go.

After a few minutes Cam starts baiting the guards. It sounds like idle chit-chat, but what he really wants to know (Dani knows) is whether they'll move off the door, or if they've got orders to stay put no matter what he does. Apparently they do. So Cam shuts up, and Teal'c starts talking to them about freedom for the Jaffa. Again, it probably isn't going to get him anywhere, but it's expected. And who knows what might happen later? Master Bra'tac spoke to Teal'c about freedom for _decades_ before his words had any effect.

She counts her heartbeats, and strings the beats into minutes and the minutes into quarter-hours and the quarters into hours. It's still three hours (by her best guess) to the earliest point they can expect the _Odyssey_ when Ba'al returns with some more Jaffa. They unshackle the four of them: Cam and Teal'c, who were hanging suspended, stagger a little, but nobody wants to give Ba'al the satisfaction of seeing what condition they're really in.

"Are we going somewhere?" Cam asks.

"Since you've all been so helpful, I have a special treat for you," Ba'al says.

"You're changing sides," Dani guesses, doing her best "pert idiot" act.

"To ally myself with _you_?" Ba'al sneers. Back to pissy.

"We were thinking more of 'against Anubis,'" Cam says.

"Anubis is dead," Ba'al says.

Sammy actually manages to laugh. "Really?" she says. "We've heard that before."

Ba'al glares sharply at her. "Don't cause me to reconsider my position," he says.

"Hoping to, actually," Cam says. Ba'al ignores him.

They're taken to the _pel'tac_. Through the windows they can see Galar below them. They're still in orbit (unless, of course, it's some other planet; she's never seen Galar from space), and that's just about the only good news, because the sky between Galar and the _ha'tak_ is filled with _al'kesh_ and Death Gliders, and the surface of the planet is burning at a hundred different points. _Goa'uld_ ships swoop back and forth. Occasionally the _ha'tak_ fires as well.

There's a dark-haired woman standing on the _pel'tac_. She's wearing _Goa'uld_ robes. Her hair is upswept, held by jeweled combs, and her face is painted in the Egyptian style. Ba'al smiles, and holds out his hand to her, and she smiles in return, and walks toward him. Cam makes a faint noise, half a groan, half a sigh. It's Reya Varrick.

Or it was.

"Is the destruction not lovely, my dear?" Ba'al asks.

"Yes, my lord," she answers, and her eyes flash.

Cam takes a step forward—reflex, irresistible—and two of the guards cross their staff-weapons in his path, barring his way. The former Reya Varrick regards the four of them for a moment, then looks back at Galar again. "Dr. Jackson did not wish the host to enjoy Colonel Mitchell, when SG-1 first visited her planet. I wonder if she would change her mind now?" 'Reya' says.

"So you came to Galar to loot it. And now you're just going to blow it up?" Sammy demands in outrage.

Ba'al raises his hand. The jewel in his palm glows, and Sammy's flung back against the bulkhead. And for that one instant—a second, maybe two—everyone in the _pel'tac_ is focused on Sammy.

Teal'c wrenches a staff-weapon out of the nearest Jaffa's hand and tosses it to Dani. She racks and fires it, and before the first bolt is away, Cam is armed, too. They shoot at Ba'al and 'Reya'; their personal force-shields protect them, but the Jaffa have it trained into them from infancy to protect the gods. For just an instant, they aren't trying to secure the now-armed prisoners. They're regrouping to form a human shield first, and the time that takes costs them. By the time they start shooting back, all of SG-1 has taken cover, and Dani's always thought the control room of a damned spaceship is a lousy place for a firefight, but apparently that's never occurred to the Jaffa. Sparks are flying and fires are starting and she really hopes this thing has a secondary control room because this one is pretty much history. Ba'al and 'Reya' retreat and the Jaffa follow. Teal'c slags the door locking mechanism, but they'll have it open again in seconds.

"Rings!" Sammy gasps, reeling to her feet. "Surface!" It seems as if Galar would be the last place in the universe they'd want to go, but they certainly don't want to be here when Ba'al gets back. There was a ring transporter in Apophis's _pel'tac_ , and all _ha'taks_ are built to the same design. They drag themselves into the rings and activate them, and they may be about to die, and she wishes--

But they don't.

The next thing she's aware of is wind, and cold, and the scent of growing things. She sneezes before she can stop herself. The ring platform is inside a high walled compound, and the obvious assumption is they're somewhere on the Staff Headquarters grounds. The gates have been forced; blown open with a staff weapon. Apparently they aren't the first people tonight to use the platform. Retreating Jaffa, probably. Ba'al would probably have recalled his ground forces once he started attacking the surface. There was a time when she didn't know these things—couldn't make these easy assumptions about tactics—but that was a long time ago.

The air is full of smoke, and the sky flashes as _al'kesh_ make their bombing runs. The ground shakes.

"He can't mean to kill them all," Dani says. The _Goa'uld_ —the _Goa'uld_ they're used to—don't do that. They conquer. They don't just obliterate.

"Covering his tracks?" Cam suggests.

"If he thinks Anubis is dead, what does he want with us?" Sammy asks.

"A gift," Teal'c says, after a moment. "He wishes to purchase his life from those System Lords which yet remain. Inevitably they would wish to execute him for his part in the destruction of so many of their fellows."

It seems logical, and Dani nods. "Which would be why he waited this long," she says. All the other times—those were feints. Skimming the till, just as Cam said. Waiting until he was ready to claim the jackpot. Them. "I think he's wrong." That Anubis is dead, she means.

"Doesn't matter right now," Cam says. "If we don't find cover, there isn't going to be anything left for _Odyssey_ to pick up."

As they move out, they see that the grounds are littered with bodies. It's hard to tell from the position of the bodies why they killed each other. Most of the dead are wearing Security Forces uniforms, but there are a few Jaffa.

"Wait! Oh, god, Cam, wait! Look!" In the sea of Galaran grey, she sees a flash of green. It's only a blur; everything is without her glasses. But she points, and they hurry over to check. It's Kovacek, Grogan, Gross, and dePalma. SG-9. Their hands are cuffed behind them. They're lying dead among a mound of Galaran SFs. Sammy kneels beside them, checking for life signs. Nothing. There's a dead Jaffa nearby.

Prisoners being taken to the rings? Why were they killed instead? If they were meant to be executed all along, why bring them so far from their cells? It doesn't matter now. Whatever Ba'al intended to do with them, he didn't get the chance.

Cam bends down, fumbles at the bodies for a moment, takes their tags, stuffs them in his pocket. "Come on," he says.

"I will follow," Teal'c says. 

Cam looks puzzled, but Dani knows what Teal'c's thinking. She takes Cam's arm. "Come on," she echoes. They start to move. Behind them Teal'c's staff-weapon fires. Again. Again. If any of SG-9 were snaked, they're free now.

It starts to rain.

Cam is quiet, talking only when he needs to steer them. They stop a couple of times: to arm themselves and to strip the dead—jackets for the three of them, and a shirt for Cam, but they can't find anything to fit Teal'c; all he has on is the chainmail pants from the Jaffa armor. They're trying to stay out of sight—there are still a few Galarans patrolling the grounds—but the Staff Compound was obviously hit hard and early, and most of the Galarans stationed here are either dead or fled. But if Teal'c's right about what Ba'al wants the four of them for, he's going to at least _try_ to get them back, and this time he won't play around. 

The rain gets heavier. It gives them some cover. It looks as if the Staff Headquarters Building took a direct hit from the _al'kesh_ ; it's pretty much a hole in the ground now. But one wall and a piece of roof remains, and they can get out of the rain, at least a little, and they all have Galaran weapons now in addition to their three staff-weapons. They settle in with their backs to the slab of cold concrete, huddled close together by unspoken agreement; in case any of the transponders aren't working, the others will be enough to give the _Odyssey_ a lock.

In the distance they hear sirens and the sounds of bombs. And there's nothing they can do to help. That's the worst. The ground is wet, and when the wind changes, it blows rain into their faces, and they're all wet to the skin. (Hungry, thirsty, cold, and her tongue hurts where she bit it, too, which is just a nagging annoyance.) And they've all been tortured, and SG-9 is dead, and she's worked with Stan Kovacek's team for years and she thinks if only she'd found the right words fast enough this morning they'd be alive now, and she's lost so many of her friends and loved ones to the _Goa'uld_ —Skaara and Robert and even Simon—but this is the first time anyone Cam ever knew (Reya) has been taken. She says the only thing she can.

"We'll get her back." 

They'll try.

Cam nods, unspeaking, and puts an arm around her shoulders. She presses against him, and reaches out to take Teal'c's hand. On Cam's other side, Sammy is leaning against him, her head on his shoulder. Her gun is in her hand, and she's resting it on Cam's thigh. The sound of emergency sirens from the city ebbs and flows with the shift in the wind. The sounds grow fainter, as one by one the sirens fall silent. 

"Some missions just suck," Sammy says after a while.

"Yeah," Cam agrees.

The transition from dark and cold and wet to clean and bright and dry is instant, unheralded, and disorienting. Colonel Emerson isn't there (in what she's pretty sure they don't call the Transporter Room, although _really..._ ) to welcome them aboard; he's on the bridge, running like hell, having slipped into the system under an Asgard cloak, dropped everything (cloaks and shields) to beam them aboard, and taken off again (sublight to hyperlight as fast as he can) the moment they were confirmed aboard. So they've pissed off Ba'al, which is at least nice to know.

They spend most of the trip (two days) back to Earth in Sick Bay (it isn't called the Infirmary, not on a ship). Cam's in the worst shape; he and Teal'c took the brunt of Ba'al's attentions, but even just on tretonin Teal'c still heals faster than a human. She and Sammy don't have much more than a few minor burns. General Landry (they talk to him _en route_ ) is happy to have them back and safe, not happy to have lost SG-9 (though it's better to know for sure than not), and equally unhappy to know Ba'al has pretty much smashed Galar flat. It also means (if anybody cares) that Ba'al has attacked an Asgard Protected World, which means either he knows the Asgard have too much to worry about back in Ida to smack him down for violating the _Goa'uld_ /Asgard Protected Planets Treaty, or that he's exploiting some legal loophole. The Treaty is only binding on the System Lords and their vassals, after all. If Ba'al's renounced that status (or had it taken from him) he's free to act in any way he likes. (Yippee.)

They left for Galar on Wednesday. They're home on Friday afternoon. At least they're back in uniform by the time they arrive, so Cam doesn't have to explain one more "wardrobe malfunction" to General Landry.

They did their medical check-through on the _Odyssey_ , so the one in the SGC is short. Their debriefing is longer, because it covers not only the Galar Mission, but (because she turned out to be right about it going wrong) with an additional two hours spent going over her notes on all the "wrong" missions since Tartarus.

"Dr. Jackson, none of these missions has anything in common," General Landry says. He sounds more plaintive than anything.

"Except that Ba'al knew about them in advance," Cam says. Taking it—taking her—on faith, because she's gone over and over and _over_ these missions, and Landry's just stating facts. They have nothing in common. Nothing.

"Okay," Sammy says reasonably. "How?"

"When you said he had a spy in the SGC, Ba'al agreed you were telling the truth," Cam says. "So who is it?"

"It would have to be someone who knew about the missions in advance. And someone who could get the information out. Quickly. Because more than half of these missions were hit within a day or two of being assigned," she says. That much (thank fuck) is a simple fact.

General Landry glares at the printout in front of him as if it's a personal enemy. "My report doesn't even leave my office until Wednesday. It doesn't get to Washington until Thursday. If we have a leak, ladies and gentlemen, it's right here."

All of them look at her. And she _doesn't know_. Any more than she knows how she knew the Galar mission was going to go bad. She shakes her head, helplessly.

"Think about it," General Landry advises (as if she hasn't been?) He hesitates and looks at Cam. "Colonel Mitchell, do I have to shut this place down again?"

There's a long pause before Cam answers. "We've always known any time we go through the Stargate there could be trouble. I think it's just a case of assuming from now on there's _definitely_ going to be trouble."

"Fair enough." General Landry doesn't look happy, but he does look relieved. "I'll have Chief Harriman contact the teams currently offworld and tell them to keep alert. And I suppose it's time to get the NID in on this."

Dani winces inwardly. She supposes the NID is necessary, but she doesn't like them. Just like the Stargate Program, they're a black-budget operation, without exterior review and oversight (unlike the Stargate Program). Only the NID operates right here on Earth, and goodbye Bill of Rights.

"It will be a good idea to keep this as quiet as possible," Sammy says. "Whoever our spy is, we want to take him or her alive—and find out how they're passing the information to Ba'al. If I could make a suggestion, General?"

"Feel free, Colonel Carter," General Landry grumbles.

"With your permission, I'll contact Agent Barrett and brief him on our situation. He's worked with us before. It won't take much to bring him up to speed."

General Landry considers for a moment, then nods. "Do that. I want this situation resolved as soon as possible. I don't like traitors operating in my command."

Well, who does?

Landry dismisses them—telling them to call it a day—and they all rise. Sammy looks at her watch, and announces that Cassie is probably already at the house. Cam grins at her and says in that case, they really have something to celebrate tonight. And looking at them, Cam and Sammy together, Dani realizes Cam's already let go of it. The torture and the loss and the mission gone wrong. The fact their toxic mystery is still unsolved. He hasn't forgotten about any of it (she knows that) and he doesn't hold any of it lightly. But he's let go. 

She wishes that were something she knew how to do.

#

She knows she was supposed to _go home_ , but the Ancient database won't translate itself, and she's been gone for three days, and it seems (lately) that no matter where she is, she feels she needs to be somewhere else.

She doesn't feel like celebrating. What she wants to do is go and hide. She doesn't know why the others can't see this is _her_ failure, _her_ fault, and General Landry is writing letters to the families, Stan's and the others', coming up with some lie to explain why they're dead (somewhere, somehow), and there will be a memorial service, and their names will be added to the wall in the chapel, and life will go on.

She stops at home on her way to Sammy's ( _at the house,_ her mind supplies with antic precision); her property, but less a home to her now than it was when it belonged to... She shuts down the train of thought with ruthless precision. There are things she won't think about. More each day, and she wonders, vaguely, if denial can ever reach critical mass. But she parks and goes inside (to the _house_ ) and changes clothes, putting on the blue sweater Cassie bought her, the lotus necklace from Sammy. They'll like to see that their gifts are honored (a tradition on Abydos, she thinks, and reins her thoughts in sharply yet again), and she doesn't have that many places to wear either one. It's not, she thinks, as if she wants the sort of life these things belong to, and just as well, since she couldn't have it anyway. 

And soon no one will, if she can't do her job. 

_At least you aren't going crazy. Or at least, not too crazy._ There's that. Cold comfort in comparison to knowing there's a traitor within the gates. She wonders if there's anyone left alive on Galar. If Ba'al intends to rule there, leaving Reya as his vassal.

She makes one last check of _the house_ and goes back out to her Jeep.

Cassie is delighted to see her, filled with tales of her new life, her successes, her romantic conquests. UCLA is the same campus Dani remembers, and (just as it was for Dani, a lifetime ago) it's both an end and a beginning: Cassie belongs to Earth now, forever. For so many years she looked backward, one foot still on Hanka, in her heart, in her thoughts, but no longer. She's brought pictures—of her dorm room, her roommate, her new racing bike. She's talking about moving off-campus next year, sharing a house with some kids she knows.

She's already been to visit Sobaka. When she first came to Earth, Jack got Cassie a puppy, and she'd canvassed them all for names: "Sobaka" is Russian for "dog." When Janet died, and Cassie moved in with Sammy, Cassie insisted she wanted to give Sobaka to a friend of hers; Sammy's yard wasn't fenced, and her schedule was erratic, and at any point Cassie might be bundled off to stay with someone else because Sammy was MIA. Cassie said it was better for Sobaka to have someone around all the time to take care of him; Dani thought (then) that Cassie simply couldn't bear to have something (someone) around that reminded her of what she'd lost. Both Cassie and Sobaka have long since made their adjustments: Sammy once said Cassie is a survivor. She's had to be.

Cam and Sammy roister around the kitchen, jostling and teasing each other as they cook. Not quite in the fashion of siblings, and Dani thinks again, in wistful confusion, that Sammy and Cam could make each other so happy, if they only would. But for some reason, no. Tried and failed? Tried and abandoned? She can't imagine why it wouldn't have worked, but she won't ask Sammy. She doesn't think she'll understand the explanation. Wouldn't anyone want to be with Cam? (Another train of thought better left unpursued.) Cassie sits at the counter, explaining the rules of Women's Field Hockey to Teal'c. Apparently there's a team at college; Dani isn't clear on the details. She also isn't sure whether Teal'c's following Cassie's explanation or not, but (according to Cam) Teal'c's an asset to the SGC basketball team and (again, according to Cam) he understands football. The world according to Cameron Mitchell, she thinks (not really for the first time) is probably a nice place. Filled with nice people and orderly rules. And she wonders (also not for the first time) why he came to the SGC and how he can bear to stay.

It's not ... appropriate ... to spend this much time wondering about the world inside Cam's head. It's like yearning for the impossible: the Christian Heaven and the resurrection of the dead. Much better—safer—to concentrate on what she knows is true and real, even if (sometimes) her grasp on that seems to be ... tenuous.

Cam talks about the menu for Thanksgiving, and who will be there. He has to shop this weekend, he says; he hasn't bought the turkey yet. He's thinking of cornbread and chestnut stuffing. Sammy says she'll call Josie this week and see if General Hammond will be coming out; if not, Josie, Tessa, and Kayla, at least.

"We should invite Jonas," Dani says absently. The latest in their series of alien strays. Endlessly curious about Life on Earth. He'd enjoy seeing one of their ritual occasions. "Maybe Nyan?" Although (she thinks) Nyan is dating someone; he may have other plans. Her department will be short-staffed next week; the civilian consultants scattering to distant relatives for the holiday weekend. Amelia's flying out Wednesday morning; she has family back East. Suzanne Kiplinger (gearing up for her third pass through GTO&T, and at this point all communication between her and Dani is done through either Jonas or Nyan; Dani can happily live with that) has already left.

Cam smiles at her, a look of unalloyed pleasure. "Great. Always good to have a full table. Maybe do a ham, too. Ought to be able to get the pies out of the way ahead of time, if I can get a little help in the kitchen."

She raises an eyebrow at him, because surely he can't mean her? He winks at her, and she decides he probably does, damn him. Doesn't he realize there aren't enough hours in the day _now?_ And Teal'c isn't helping, because he chimes right in, saying he will be honored to assist Colonel Mitchell and Danielle Jackson in their efforts to prepare the feast. And Sammy laughs and says it's settled then, and what kind of pies is he planning to make?

When they aren't saving her life and her honor, her team is dedicated to driving her absolutely insane. Dinner is beef stew with biscuits, though, so she forgives them (slightly), and Sammy's made Cassie's favorite dessert, the orange-walnut spice cake.

Dani remembers sitting in Sammy's kitchen seven years ago, trying (awkwardly, helplessly) to comfort a crying Cassie. Cassie missed Hanka, Earth was strange, she missed her family, she wasn't doing well in school. Janet was dealing with a crisis at the Mountain and Dani and Sam were babysitting, doing damage control as best they could. And Sammy had opened the refrigerator and started taking out milk and butter and eggs, and told Cassie that when she'd been sad (as a little girl) her mother had always told her cake would put things into the proper perspective...

So many years of memories, good and bad inextricably braided together. And there are so many things Dani would like to forget, but if she could only do that by giving up the good times as well, would she?

No. 

She's been (literally, absolutely) someone else more than once. Lost her memories, lost her mind. She's always fought to regain her own identity, painful as it is. But it's (still, always) a temptation. The Galaran technology made it possible: if Earth had gained it, how would they have used it, she wonders? So much potential for abuse there, more (she thinks) than the largest bomb they could possibly build. At least that's one thing they'll never have to find out now.

At the end of the evening (they play silly card games, the five of them, and watch part of a DVD Cassie's brought. Dani's not completely sure Teal'c really gets the concept of cartoons, especially the surreal ones, but then they don't make a lot of sense to her either, much of the time) she and Teal'c are the first to leave. It's a longer drive to the Mountain from Sammy's than it is from either her place or Cam's.

"You continue to believe you are at fault," Teal'c says after a few minutes.

"If it was too dangerous for us to go, it was too dangerous for anyone to go," she answers. No need for either of them to explain. They've been having these telegraphic conversations for nearly a decade now.

"You sought proof before you spoke."

"If he'd just--" If General Landry had just held off sending SG-9 by another half hour, Cam would have called them off. Maybe Landry would have listened.

"If Colonel Kovacek's team had not gone to Galar and been detained by the _Goa'uld_ , we would not have received warning that our lives might be imperiled there. Had we not gone in search of them, we would not now know there is an enemy among us." Teal'c is precise, logical, balancing gains and losses as unerringly as an accountant. A military mindset. People tend to forget Teal'c is a soldier from a race bred to be soldiers. The temptation is to think of the Jaffa as barbarian warriors, but they aren't. They're as disciplined and precise as the ancient Spartans, as pragmatic as any _condotierri_. And as insanely honor-bound as one of Homer's Greeks. An uneasy misalliance of traits that work fine (she supposes) in a _Goa'uld's_ feudal court, but which have brought Teal'c to grief among the _Tau'ri_ more than once. And right now, his analysis does nothing to comfort her. If she'd only found proof... 

"They're still dead."

"They were warriors, Danielle Jackson," Teal'c answers. "As are we." It's nothing more or less than the truth, but it still doesn't make her feel any better.

She drops Teal'c off and drives back to the house _(Jack's house)_. Cam's car isn't there, and she feels an odd sense of disappointment, because it's Friday. But not a regular Friday, really. They were at Sammy's. And just as well he isn't here; she needs a reminder not to count on him. She puts the Jeep in the garage and goes inside. Tries to talk herself out of building a fire—she'll need to sit up with it, at least for a little while—but she really can't. There are logs piled on the hearth, waiting (they've reached the time of year where wood has to be brought inside to dry before you can burn it, even though she's put a tarp over most of the woodpile now, and she probably ought to spend some time tomorrow shifting wood into the back of the garage, too) and she makes up the fire and lights it, then gets out the bourbon and sets it on the table. Not for Cam, of course (because he isn't coming), but you can't put Scotch into coffee, and she has the fire, so she might as well have the coffee. She goes into the kitchen to brew it up. She can pick up her mail tomorrow (could have today if she'd thought of it) and that reminds her of being downtown shopping for coffee because she'd run out... 

And thinking she'd seen Vala.

Who can't be on Earth, because it's a ridiculous notion, but who (if it wasn't) is perfectly capable (from a physical/technical/technological standpoint) of getting here undetected, because Cam said her ship had advanced cloaking technology. There's just no reason (on Earth or otherwise) for her to _be_ here. The _Tau'ri_ are a pain-in-the-ass to the _Goa'uld_ , but from a galactic standpoint, they're impoverished: no trinium, no _naquaadah_ , and most of their technology is decidedly second-rate. Vala's a thief, and there's nothing here to steal. _(Who was she working for, Dr. Jackson? Why did she want the Eye of Ra? How did she know about it?)_

The coffee brews, and when it's finished she pours and comes back out into the living room. Cam's just walking in the front door. He's got his go-bag slung over his shoulder, and a large paper bag in his arms. She stops, staring in astonishment, because of course he has a key, and of course it's Friday, but she'd convinced herself so thoroughly he wasn't going to be here she simply isn't expecting him. 

He nods toward the fire. "Nice."

"There's coffee," she says.

"Better get this put away first," he says, and she follows him back into the kitchen, and watches him put eggs and bacon and butter and heavy cream into her refrigerator. There are other (more mysterious) things in the bag, too: flour and baking soda and yeast and honey. "Figured you didn't have any of the necessary," he says, watching her watch him. "And I'm afraid to imagine what your idea of breakfast might be."

He closes the refrigerator door. She opens the freezer illustratively. Half a pint of chocolate ice cream and four frozen Snickers bars. He looks over her shoulder. "Thought so," he says, amused. She closes the freezer.

She gestures at the pot. "Think I'll take mine straight," he says, and she gets down a glass for him. They go back to the living room. Drink and watch the fire.

"You don't need to bother with the pep talk," she says after a while. "Teal'c already did."

"Would'a like to've heard that," Cam says, after a moment.

"It wasn't my fault. I was looking for proof before I said anything. If SG-9 hadn't gone to Galar, we wouldn't have known we might be heading into trouble. We all know any of us could die on any mission."

"Doesn't help much, does it?" Cam says.

"No."

"True, though."

She doesn't look at him. Quantum physics (so Sammy has said) believes in a world where things can be both true and not true at the same time: Schrödinger's Cat is eternally dead and alive. Dani's world is different. It's filled with absolute truths, even when they're contradictory and unknowable. Enough truth, so she believes, will reconcile all contradictions and bring order to her universe. "I should have--"

"'Should' makes a bad piecrust. You did your best. Baby, we're here and we're alive because of what you did. And I'm damned grateful for that. And we know we've got something we need to find now. That ain't nothing." 

She adds more bourbon to her cup. "How do we find it? I've been looking, Cam, and I can't--"

"We aren't going to worry about it right now. We know there's a problem, and we're going to chase it down. Some fresh eyes on the problem won't hurt either."

He's right. He has to be, because the alternative is intolerable. She wants to believe it, to believe _in him_. But all he seems to see is the times when she's right, and all she can see is every time she's been wrong. Not fast enough, not good enough, not smart enough. The people she's failed to save and all the tasks she's abandoned half-finished. His arm is stretched out along the back of the couch. He reaches up and strokes her hair, then his hand settles on her shoulder.

"I'm not good for you," she says wearily.

"Says the woman who just got my sorry ass off a _Goa'uld_ mothership in one piece, and who's going to be spending the next week right here in this very kitchen helping me bake pies."

"Here?" she asks, momentarily diverted. (Just as he means her to be, she knows that perfectly well.)

"Don't make sense to cart 'em back and forth across town, do it? Besides, if I'm doing a turkey in that oven, I better get it all figured out ahead of time, or there's going to be trouble."

"It's an oven," she says blankly, and just for that, she's treated to a short lecture on ovens, how some run hot, and some run cold, and even the best of them can have hot spots and cold spots, and you can compensate, sure, but you have to know in advance...

"You sound like Sammy with one of her _naquaadah_ generators," she complains.

"Same idea. Little smaller scale," he says.

"So... we cook. Here," she says doubtfully. 

"That's the idea. Tomorrow we shop. I can make a test pie to see how the oven goes, and we'll take it from there."

"You already cooked here. For General Hammond."

"Sure, sure. But this is _Thanksgiving_."

He's managing her, and she's allowing it because she's tired (not physically, plenty of rest on the ship, but they lost a team on Galar and that hurts, and if it hurts her it hurts him more), but she vows there has to be an end to this. He can't take care of himself and her too. And if she's so weak, needy, compromised, or _just falling apart_ that she can't survive without Cameron Mitchell (Cameron _Everett_ Mitchell; she heard Sammy call him that once, a while back, she forgets how long ago now) there to hold her hand through every minute of her day, then she really isn't much use to anyone in the first place, is she?

This has to stop.

All of it has to stop.

She doesn't want to hurt him, and she doesn't want to fight. SG-1 has weathered enough fights (internal, external), and she doesn't want to start another one. She just needs to explain to him, to make him understand, that he needs to go away and leave her alone. Completely. Permanently. Because she can't stand wanting him and she can't stand needing him and more than either of those things, she can't stand the thought of _losing him_ (because she lost Jack, and oh god, she _cannot do that twice_ ). And fear is the thing that paralyzes you and blinds you and keeps you from being able to do your job. And she can't do hers if all she's thinking of is the day she has to walk away from Cam's dead body on some alien planet somewhere _(the way they walked away from SG-9 on Galar)_ and how the next thing she'll do is come home and put a bullet through her head, because she _just can't stand any more losses._

So before that day comes she has to stop caring. Somehow.

And so, though normally, on the nights they're here together, she'd fall asleep on his shoulder (he makes her feel warm, and safe, and she's slipped into allowing that, and she can't, she won't, has to stop) and wake up later tucked up on the couch, with him nearby asleep on the floor (standing guard, even in sleep), tonight she gets to her feet, determined, and sets the firescreen in front of the fire, and tells him she'll see him in the morning (she can't quite bring herself to tell him to go home) and the guest room bed is made up fresh.

If he'd protest, if he'd argue (but what is there to argue about?), she'd have something to fight against. But he just tells her to sleep well.

And she goes off to the bedroom, changes into sweats, flips on the white noise generator and the HEPA filter (automatic bed time routine) and washes her face and brushes her teeth and climbs into bed. And lies staring at the ceiling, aching with tension, unable to still her mind. _Goa'uld_ agents in the SGC, and what will they do next? Nothing stays the same. Things always get worse. The NID will come, and what will happen then? Was Ba'al right? Is Anubis dead? It's been over a month since SG-1 destroyed Tartarus. Would he really hide that long? Or was Ba'al lying to them? (A _Goa'uld_ lying, now there's a stretch.) Maybe he wanted to take them prisoner, not to buy off the System Lords (the ones who are left, anyway), but as a gift for his master. But that would mean Ba'al has linked them to the destruction of Tartarus (since why else would they be of especial value as a present to Anubis?), and, if Anubis is still alive, if he has, Ba'al will certainly tell Anubis what they've done. And (then, therefore) Anubis will come to destroy Earth: if Ba'al could destroy Galar with impunity, Anubis can certainly destroy Earth. Maybe Galar was their test case.

She doesn't know. Any more than she knows who the spy inside the SGC is. Just that there _is_ one. Someone who knows the details of all their missions and is passing them to Ba'al. Why, she wonders, is Ba'al willing to take a risk like this, reactivating his spy network after Anubis uncovered his first one? Is there some fundamental difference between the two that makes this one safe where the other one wasn't? Or (around again) is Anubis dead, or (even if he isn't) does Ba'al actually think he is?

The hours pass, and sleep eludes her.

It's two-thirty in the morning when she surrenders to the inevitable. If she isn't asleep after three hours, she isn't going to be. She gets out of bed and makes her way through the darkened house, pausing to check the guest room. The door is ajar, but the room beyond is silent. Cam's either died in his sleep, or he isn't in there. She pushes the door open a little farther to check. The guest room faces the street, and even though the curtains are drawn, enough light spills through the cracks to show her the bed is still made up.

He might have gone home, but she doesn't think so. Might have been paged to the Mountain—she wouldn't have heard him leave—but it's hard to think of anything that would call him in and not call her in too, and not only does she sleep with her phone and her pager, he would have come to get her. She walks on out into the living room. He's moved the firescreen, and he's sitting in front of the fire. From the look of the fire, he's added more wood, too.

"Thought you'd be up again," he says.

She goes into the kitchen, gets a glass. She doesn't bother to turn on the lights. Comes back, gets the Scotch. Sits down on the couch. Pours herself a drink.

"You never met Robert Rothman," she says without preamble. "He was one of my students at Harvard. That was pretty entertaining; they were all years older than I was, and I'm told I've never really looked my age. Beside the point. He was, oh, a pretty damned good archaeologist, a friend. So, when the Program started up, he was one of the people I recruited. And after a couple of years, he qualified for the Teams. Six years ago, we were working together on an offworld dig—P3X-888—and he was infested by an aboriginal _Goa'uld_ , and we shot and killed him."

"Read the report," Cam says. He's turned sideways now, looking at her.

"We have the hardest job in the world. It's one it isn't actually possible to do. Everyone who does it is going to fail. It's only a question of when. Every member of every Gate Team will die or go insane. Or possibly both."

"Or retire," Cam says.

"I suggested you do that once, if you recall."

"Don't think my number's up quite yet," Cam says. He stretches, and gets to his feet.

"The Program has always operated on the principle of conservation of loss," she continues quietly. "Individual failure is inevitable, but mission success is vital. Therefore, the strategy is to defer the failure of the individual for as long as possible."

"Didn't know you'd read that report," Cam says mildly.

"You'd be surprised at what I read. The point is, individuals who overextend themselves are obviously going to burn out faster. From the Program's point of view, that's a bad thing."

He sits down on the couch, beside her, but not touching. "Why do I get the feeling we're getting to the point?"

She stares down at the glass in her hand. "Don't think I don't ... notice your ... care. I do. But you have a lot to do, Cam. Important work. You can't just..."

"Not doing anything I don't want to do."

"That isn't the point!" she says fiercely. She knows what he wants. She can't imagine why he wants it, but that's irrelevant to the fact that he does.

"M'hm. What are you doing for Christmas?"

The question is both surreal and extraneous, since she's trying to explain to him why he needs to _go away_. "What?"

"Well, it's about a month from now, and if I can get leave, I'm going home, and I figure Sam and Cassie'll come too, and Teal'c'd really like to go, so I figure we could all go. Momma'd love to meet you."

"Your mother doesn't even know I exist." And she's not spending Christmas with Cam's family.

"I wouldn't be all too sure about that. But you were telling me how I've got too much to do to be making sure all the members of my team are in fit shape to go into the field, and you just go along with that."

It takes a moment for the sense of his words to penetrate, and when it does, she feels betrayed. Indignant. "I've been taking care of myself for years," she says.

Cam nods, and turns his head to look at her. And she knows what he's thinking because she's thinking it too—that there haven't been many years as bad as this one, that ten years of going through the Stargate takes its toll on body and mind, that nobody's supposed to be irreplaceable, but unfortunately she comes close—and that he doesn't want to say any of that aloud, but he will if she makes him.

"Still are," he says. "Do a better job of it if you'd learn to cook."

And without him covering for her, without his _care_ , she wouldn't have gotten through the last year as a functioning member of SG-1 and she certainly won't get through the next one. Assuming Earth has that long. And it does, it will, it has to, they've won against impossible odds before. They just have to find the way this time.

"Never happen," she says.

"'Never's" a long time," Cam answers.

But she owes him the out, the escape, the truth, at least as much of it as she can bear to tell. "Overextending yourself. If I can't ... function ... without all this..."

He reaches out and takes her free hand. It's an oddly more-intimate gesture than all the times he's put an arm around her shoulders, or she's draped herself across his chest. She curls her fingers against his, returning the pressure. "All I'm doing," he says with careful seriousness, "is helping you sleep. That's all. And all you're doing is sleeping. So we don't have a problem."

Once she slept dreamlessly, as if by right. Then her life became a series of escalating nightmares, waking and sleeping, and when Jack went to sleep beneath the Antarctic ice, by some cruel symmetry, suddenly she could barely sleep at all. _The sleep of reason begets monsters._ Trust the Germans to have a positive outlook on things.

Cam has never lied to her. And she knows he won't. And if it doesn't entirely solve the problem that she cares too much, somehow at least she isn't worrying about him now, and the sense of relief leaves her feeling as abruptly exhausted as if she's been drugged. She almost drops her glass; he takes it from her hand and sets it on the coffee table, then unclasps their hands and puts his arm around her. She can't function without sleep, and she needs to function. Now and tomorrow and next week, and because of that, preserving herself from unendurable loss is an unacceptable luxury.

_"The Program has always operated on the principle of conservation of loss. Therefore, the strategy is to defer the failure of the individual for as long as possible."_

As long as possible. Until the time comes.

_"But I've a rendezvous with Death / At midnight in some flaming town... And I to my pledged word am true, / I shall not fail that rendezvous."_

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon-appropriate torture, courtesy of Ba'al. SG-9 is killed. Galar is blown up. Reya Varrick gets snaked.


	13. NOVEMBER 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cam cooks Thanksgiving dinner. Felger has a girlfriend. Vala Mal Doran shows up in an unlikely place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warnings in endnotes.

In the morning—later morning—Dani wakes up (on the couch) to morning sunlight, late enough the sun has already melted the heavy frost (bordering on snow, but still not quite there; they've been lucky this year) that covered most of the back lawn. The remnants linger in the shady spots, but they'll be gone, too, in an hour or so.

Cam doesn't quite hurry her through breakfast, but she can tell he's eager to get going (she's fairly sure by now that to Cam cooking-and-food, at least good food, are something almost as sacred as books are to her). And apparently she's going with him.

"I'm pretty sure there's still going to be food in the stores when we get there," she grumbles.

"The weekend before Thanksgiving?" Cam says in disbelief. "We might have to chase all over town to find a decent turkey."

He isn't kidding, either.

She's never shopped for a Thanksgiving turkey in her life; and discovers that apparently it's a big deal. They go to two different supermarkets (where Cam rejects every turkey in sight; either they're too small, or there's something else mysteriously wrong with them), then he gets on the phone to Sammy and they drive to yet a third place, where Cam finally admits that one of the absolutely-identical turkeys in the case will _do_. With this vital element of the forthcoming feast in hand, they proceed with the rest of their list.

A ham. Not (of course) a canned ham (Cam looks at her as if she's suggested serving roast human baby). A fresh ham, bone in (which requires a trip to yet another store). And that's only the beginning. If they hadn't taken the truck (with the cooler in the back for the most fragile of the perishables) they'd have been making trips back and forth to the house all day. As it is, they're only finished shopping by mid-afternoon. Her entire kitchen is filled with food. Also the chest freezer in the garage. (She never uses it, but it's still in working order.) The turkey's there, since it was too big for her refrigerator's freezer.

"Now ... lunch," Cam says happily. "And then ... we cook."

"We do?" she asks doubtfully.

He looks at her and grins. "I cook. You help."

He pulls out the frying pan, and tells her (meditatively) that it's good enough, but she really needs to get herself a good old-fashioned cast iron skillet, since it holds the heat better. And then he tells her to give Sam a call and let her know they're back, so she does. Cam's melting butter in the skillet. She wonders what's for lunch.

By the time they're done with lunch (grilled ham and cheese sandwiches—fried, really, but she's not complaining) Sammy arrives, demanding assistance. Dani goes out to the car. It's full of laundry. Not Sammy's, unless she's suddenly become several inches taller and changed sex (no sign of that at the moment). She helps Sammy carry it inside, and the mystery is solved. Saturday is Cam's day for laundry, and Cam does his laundry here. So last night Cam asked Sammy to pick up his laundry on her way over.

"If there isn't some crisis in Washington this week, General Hammond should be here," Sammy says, gazing into Dani's refrigerator as if it's filled with exciting new alien technology. "There shouldn't be. Washington's going to be a ghost town from now until New Year's."

"You eat?" Cam asks her. Dani carries the basket of laundry out to the mud room. Maybe if she's occupied there, she can get out of cooking.

"Yes, mother," Sammy says, laughter in her voice. "Leftover stew. _And_ I made sure Cassie ate, too. She intends to spend the afternoon with friends, she'll call if her plans change, she promises to be careful, and she won't do anything I wouldn't do."

Cam laughs back at her. "Okay, _now_ I'm worried."

"Cheer up," Sammy says impenitently, "she probably isn't going to blow up a sun."

"That leaves—oh, let me see now--"

Out of sight, but not out of earshot, Dani sorts lights and darks, making up the first load. It occurs to her with the sudden epiphany that comes with the discovery of the obvious that she's here _doing Cam's laundry_ , and she has a nearly-overwhelming urge to pull out her phone and call Simon, and say: _"Hey, remember that screaming fight we had twelve years ago, when you wanted me to do your laundry for you because you said you were too busy and of course I couldn't possibly be doing anything important? It wasn't the laundry I actually objected to; it was the fact you were a patronizing asshole. I don't actually mind doing laundry..."_

In the kitchen Cam and Sammy tease each other with the fond intimacy of old friends. And former lovers: Sammy has never made any secret of it. Cam has simply ... never mentioned it. But then, he's never discussed _any_ of his sexual and romantic history with Dani, and Sammy has. She wonders—if she were a Daniel-and-not-a-Danielle—if it would be exactly the other way around, because that absence from their conversations isn't so much an absence of intimacy as it is a presence of gender. They're all—all four of them—closer than any marriage, though only two of them have ever had sex with each other. In this SG-1. In its ... last ... incarnation, of course, none of them had any sex at all, at least not with each other. New rules now. _"Clean cups! Move down!"_ a ghost from ancient childhood calls. _"The strategy is to defer the failure of the individual for as long as possible."_ In the Mad Hatter's Tea Party that is the SGC, it has been decided—when? by whom?—sex will keep them all alive. Or else that the sex they were all (presumably) having anyway is no longer reason enough to deny their government a scarce and increasingly-vital resource.

Them.

"You can't hide out in there forever, baby," Cam calls, and Dani measures soap into the washing machine and sets the machine to cycling, and goes to meet her fate.

It's Cam's opinion he'll get a pretty good feel for the oven with a few pies, and a little bread never hurt anybody, either. Dani's set to peeling apples while he starts on the pastry dough. She'd wondered what half the things he'd bought were for—apparently, though she'd thought she bought every form of cookware there is, she hadn't: he bought pie-plates and a rolling pin. And waxed paper is a vital component in the preparation of pastry dough as well (so he says).

He doesn't really like her mixing bowls, but he says they'll do for now.

#

"So what's for dinner?" Sammy asks mock-innocently.

Dani's cutting strips of pastry dough to make a lattice crust. When she's done, she'll weave them together; Cam will fit it over the top of the pie and trim it to fit. Fancy, Cam says, but worth it. It's careful, painstaking work, and the dough is delicate, but she's good with delicate things. A scrap of memory surfaces: Sha're standing at her loom, singing as she worked. A weaving-song, not magic, but meant to help the weavers keep the rhythm and produce smooth tight cloth. The songs had thousands of verses; embedded in them were mnemonic keys for patterns, because the Abydans had no written language. She'd been learning to weave, though Sha're told her kindly she'd probably never be very good. _Best to stick to spinning, Dana're; it is a task any child can learn..._

Cam is making bread; another task she's more familiar with than he imagines, though she's surprised to find it's going to take so long. But he's letting the bread rise three times; on Abydos, as soon as the loaf rose, it went to the ovens.

"Three-meat spaghetti," Cam says. "Quick'n dirty."

"Can't have spaghetti without garlic bread," Sammy says, as if she's thought the matter over carefully.

"Yeah, I figure we can doctor up a loaf I bought at the store with fresh garlic and a little butter. Shouldn't be too bad."

_Says the man who spent two weeks eating MREs in the Tok'ra tunnels,_ Dani thinks. She finishes weaving one sheet of lattice—there's flour _everywhere_ —and Cam takes it carefully and covers the pie. She starts on the second. He says it's her fault they're making two pies, since she peeled too many apples, but he's the one who gave them to her. He's going to be at her house cooking every night this week from the way he and Sammy are talking. 

The pies go in the oven, the bread is left to "rest," and Cam starts on the spaghetti sauce. The three meats in Mitchell's Three Meat Spaghetti Sauce are ground beef, pork sausage, and chicken. Dani washes her hands and brushes flour from her clothes and goes to tend to the laundry as Cam de-bones raw chicken and Sammy washes and slices mushrooms and peppers. The beef and sausage are already browning in the skillet. At the rate they're using up the food he just bought, he'll have to go shopping again before Thanksgiving.

Dani puts clean dry clothing into the empty basket, moves wet clothing to the dryer, puts the last load of dirty clothing into the washer. Saturday-almost-evening and she hasn't gotten a single thing done all day. Cam can talk all he likes about her using the time to think. She needs the time to _work_. Though the most vital task may well be hopeless. With Teal'c's help, back in the beginning, she learned to read _Goa'uld_. But Teal'c couldn't help her decipher the first technical documents that fell into the SGC's hands. The Jaffa were given no conception of Science—so far as they knew, everything their masters did was accomplished by magic, as befit the gods. It wasn't until after Sammy had been host to Jolinar, and they'd begun to figure out the rudiments of _Goa'uld_ technology for themselves, they were able to work backward from that to figure out the meanings of the words in the technical documents. Teal'c and Dani could tell what they _said_ , but that certainly wasn't what they _meant_. "Shining pathway," for example, was very poetic, but the words "power cable" made a lot more sense to Sammy.

The Ancient text Dani's working on almost certainly requires just such a double translation—but not only is it incomplete, she isn't even sure what branch of the Sciences they're looking at. They found a DNA manipulator and "Khalek" in the same location, so it's probably something to do with the bio-sciences. Not that this narrows it down a _lot_ , and she's no more conversant with the secret language of Chemistry and Biology than she is with Engineering and Physics. So it's a case of probably not being able to translate—really translate—the material unless she already knows what it says, in which case, why would she have to translate it?

Eight years from now, Cassie will have her Doctorate. She intends to study biology. Genetics. Payback, in a way, for what Nirrti did on Hanka, using her people, using Cassie, as nothing more than a long-term experiment in forced evolution. In eight years, Cassie will have the technical vocabulary to help Dani with her translation—assuming the material is what Dani suspects it is—but by then it will be far too late. If all goes well, they won't need it: Anubis will have been defeated, and Earth will be safe. If all goes badly, perhaps the _Goa'uld_ and the Wraith will be fighting each other in Pegasus: to the victor go the spoils. 

They have to win.

But for nearly five years now they've been playing chess against Anubis. Winning a few skirmishes but no decisive victories. He can afford to let them have their triumphs; he feels confident of eventual success. And why shouldn't he? He seems to be doing what no one else has ever done: he's brought the _Goa'uld_ Empire to the brink of extinction. Bastet, Nirrti, Morrigan, Cronos, Sekmet, Kali, Ares, Anat, Mextli, Olokun, Nemesis, Hekate, Amaterasu, Typhon... System Lords and their vassals, _Goa'uld_ who'd ruled across half the galaxy for uncounted millennia, all dead.

She wonders—more and more as they discover more about him—if the divine mask Anubis took up on Earth millennia ago drove him mad (assuming, of course, you grant any _Goa'uld_ is sane by human standards to begin with). Because the point of conquest ought to be to rule. And Anubis really doesn't seem interested in doing that. But if his intention is merely to obliterate all living things, he's certainly going about it in an inefficient fashion. So he obviously wants something else, and it's too damned bad none of them can figure out what it is. At this point, Dani's almost willing to go back to Galar and ask Ba'al if _he_ knows. 

But of course Ba'al says Anubis is dead. Isn't he in for a lovely surprise, if he was telling the truth as he knew it?

With the pies in the oven, the sauce simmering on the stove, and the bread "resting" (Dani envies the bread), there's time to clean up the kitchen and wash most of the pots and pans and dishes they used today. Cam belatedly remembers his laundry. Dani tells him it's nearly done. "You did my laundry?" Cam asks. He has a strange expression on his face, halfway between disbelieving and enchanted.

"I can do laundry."

She can't cook because she's spent just about her entire life either on archaeological sites or at college campuses—which means she's become expert at doing laundry under all possible conditions and has no real experience in preparing her own food.

"Trying to get out of the cooking," Sammy says, with a certain amount of justice on her side. "It didn't work, though."

She shrugs. "I can't cook," she says simply.

"Aw, c'mon, baby," Cam begins, as if argument can evoke culinary ability. (A year and a half, and he still thinks he can talk her into being able to cook.)

"No!" Sammy interrupts. "Don't say _anybody_ can cook! _She burned Jell-O_."

"I did _not_ burn it," Dani protests. "I set it on fire."

Cam looks surprised. Well, Sammy had too, at the time. Jell-O doesn't burn. Under normal circumstances. So she's been told.

"You make Jell-O," Sammy announces to the ceiling, "by emptying a packet of Jell-O into a bowl, and adding boiling water. Once the mixture has dissolved...."

"I thought it would be faster if you boiled it," Dani says. The telling of this story is, by now, a ritual. Like all rituals, the enactment is unvarying.

"Water, Jell-O, pot, stove," Sammy says telegraphically. "Then she walked off and forgot it."

"I did not forget it," Dani protests. "I just ... forgot it." She'd gotten distracted, and gone off to jot down just one note in her journal. The next time she looked up, the kitchen was full of smoke (the pot had boiled dry) and the smoke alarm was pitching fits. She'd have been in real trouble if she'd been at her loft. Just as well she'd been at Sammy's house. Sammy hadn't exactly seen it that way at the time, returning from errands to discover the house filled with smoke and the kitchen ... full of more smoke.

"We'll just keep you away from fire and sharp objects, then," Cam says equitably. She doubts that means she's going to get out of helping to _prepare_ things, his promise to keep her away from sharp objects notwithstanding.

Cassie shows up just before dinnertime. Water is boiling on top of the stove in anticipation of the introduction of the spaghetti; Sammy is eating pieces of it (strand by uncooked strand). She seems to take particular delight in making loud crunching noises, and Cam (who is cooking cloves of garlic in butter in a saucepan on the stove) simply says (without bothering to look up) spaghetti is not supposed to go "crunch." Dani thinks about who they are, and who they're supposed to be; she remembers the documentary being filmed at the Mountain the week Janet died. Emmett Bregman never really understood them, Dani thinks, for all the interviews he did. Looking for action and human interest, not really interested in accuracy. Maybe accuracy is impossible. Maybe the very act of documenting something distorts it. Bregman was ready for them to be heroes. Probably not ready to see them standing around a kitchen this way. If this, not that. If that, not this.

The pies are cooling on the countertop, and Dani now entertains the lively suspicion that Cam bought far more items than he intends to serve at Thursday's dinner, because why else would she even _have_ (the makings of) spaghetti sauce and spaghetti and garlic at this point? But Cassie's pleased. She also grabs a beer right out of the fridge; Sam twitches, but only slightly: Cassie's nineteen now. Living on her own, off at college, and if they all died tomorrow, Cassie would ... survive. That's one victory they can claim.

Sammy finally stops eating raw spaghetti and dumps the strands, handful by handful, into the boiling water. Cam slathers the halves of a long loaf of bread with melted butter and freshly-cooked garlic and pops it into the oven on aluminum foil to brown. Dani wonders what she's going to do with the relicts of all this shopping after Thanksgiving is over. The fresh food will just spoil (since most of it, she suspects, requires cooking) and she has no use at all for all these ... ingredients.

Half an hour later the four of them sit down to eat. Garlic bread, and even Cam admits both the bread and the sauce are "not bad," and Cassie says they're "awesome," and makes dark complaints about the dining hall food, and says she _really_ wants to move out next year so she has access to a kitchen again and Sammy laughs and demands to know who she is and what she's done with Cassandra Frasier. In response (answering, but not really) Cassie says there are palm trees all over the campus, and it doesn't even snow there. She admits California has its advantages, though: she's already been to the beach several times.

It snowed on Hanka, so the locals told SG-7, though the team wasn't there long enough to mark the change of season. Cassie's village had been nowhere near the ocean. Janet's job had kept her too busy to take Cassie further afield than weekend trips to local state parks; Cassie's seen lakes and rivers and reservoirs, but not (until this summer) the sea.

She's talking about learning to surf.

After dinner (it's long enough since her single beer Sammy doesn't raise any objections) Cassie is off again. A movie date with her friends. She loves her aunts dearly, of course, but she's certain (against all indications to the contrary) they'll always be here; it's an illusion they do their best to preserve. God knows Cassie has few enough of those left, but somehow she has a comfortable conviction of their survival. Before she goes, she asks about Christmas. Are they going to Cam's again this year? He says he hopes so, if he can get leave.

"You'll come this year, right, Aunt Dani?" Cassie asks.

"It's too soon to say," she answers. She doesn't want to leave Teal'c here alone at Christmas, and she _really_ doesn't want to spend the holidays lying to a houseful of strangers. Cassie accepts that, of course. A lot can change in a month. Cam promises to send one of the pies home with Sammy, and Cassie is away.

"They grow up so fast these days," Sammy says, shaking her head. Making a joke of it, but like all jokes, it's also true. A decade isn't very long, but it's the span from childhood to adulthood.

Cam and Sammy spend an hour planning, with the intense concentration they'd bring to preparing for a mission, the matter of who will bring what, who will cook what, and when and where everything will be prepared. Dani provides them with a notepad, and lists are scribbled, timetables checked. The turkey will be done here. The ham will be done at Sammy's; Dani's oven isn't big enough for both. Cam's going to drive himself crazy trying to be in two places at once.

Then pie and coffee, and Sammy, taking the second pie, heads home.

"I don't remember things being this much trouble last year," Dani says pensively, looking at the scattered pieces of yellow paper littering the table.

"Baby, we didn't have _guests_ last year," Cam says, as if that explains everything. Six guests—seven, if Nyan comes—and apparently Cam and Sammy (between them) will be cooking enough food for the entire SGC. Dani hopes the week ahead will be quiet.

#

Yes and no.

By Wednesday evening, she isn't quite sure which would be more soothing: an immediate _Goa'uld_ invasion (to get her away from Thanksgiving), or the day itself (to get her away from the Mountain).

On Monday Malcolm Barrett arrives and begins attempting to clear all Senior Staff of the possibility of being _Goa'uld_ collaborators without letting anybody know what he's doing, since they don't know who's passing the information, or how.

They (SG-1 and General Landry, the only ones who know why Agent Barrett is here) have a working hypothesis that their collaborator is either someone who attends the Monday Morning Department Heads Meeting, or someone with access to one of the people who do, which narrows it down to her, Sammy, Cam, Graham, Walter, Sally, Amelia, General Landry, Jay Felger ... and half the Mountain. Though in practice, SG-1 has an alibi: Teal'c doesn't attend the meetings at all, the problem precedes Cam's attendance (and continues after Colonel Reynolds stopped attending, so he's probably in the clear), and there were a couple of compromised missions that occurred following meetings neither she nor Sammy attended (nor Cam, to be pedantic about things), because SG-1 was offworld. But the mission roster for the week is set up there, and any mission assigned through other channels hasn't made Dani's list of those for which she thinks Ba'al had advance information.

The list, Agent Barrett tells her, is her subjective assessment. Meaning there could be missions on it that don't belong there, and that she could have overlooked missions that do. She'll grant the first is barely possible, but not the second: in the last month she's read every single mission report filed by every single Team since July.

As for their spy ... Dani's known Amelia since she (Dani) was a teenager; Amelia was her faculty advisor at UCLA. Dani finds it hard (impossible) to believe Amelia could be spying for the _Goa'uld_. Graham or Walter? She'd bet her life (and she's betting _all_ their lives) it isn't them. Felger? Jay is frequently deranged, but he also has the universe's biggest crush on Sammy. He'd never do anything to put her in danger. And Sally spends too much time putting back together what the _Goa'uld_ have taken apart to collaborate with them.

As for General Landry, well, if he wanted to take SG-1 down and sell them to the _Goa'uld_ , all he'd really need to have done would have been _not_ send SG-9 to Galar. The mission wouldn't have gotten all fucked over and Ba'al could have picked SG-1 up somewhere else (since they wouldn't have gone if SG-9 hadn't). She suspects Ba'al is smart enough to know that if he wanted SG-1, he'd need to leave SG-9 unmolested. But either they saw something they shouldn't have, or his underlings were too overeager. And by the time they missed their first check-in, it was too late for Ba'al to do damage control. (Dani is profoundly grateful for this.)

So the facts (such as they are) are the facts. Although there aren't really any facts, outside from a dead Gate Team and the disaster on Galar (where at least Ba'al was nice enough to confirm there _is_ a spy). Just her ... hunches ... and Dani spends twelve hours with Agent Barrett between Monday and Wednesday attempting to explain to him—attempting to explain to herself—just where her conviction came from they were heading into disaster that day. Despite her conditional alibi, she's still Barrett's number one suspect. After all, she might not be working alone.

Even if she's (technically) a suspect, General Landry has cleared SG-1 for a mission, and they go on Tuesday. It's nerve-wracking, since they're assuming Ba'al knows their mission schedule, but nothing happens outside of the usual. In between prowling around the Base, Agent Barrett is in meetings with General Landry, trying to come up with a stopgap way of securing the SGC until their mole is found. If the problem is with someone in the meetings passing their mission schedule to the _Goa'uld_ , the obvious solution is to set one schedule in the meetings and go on another. This idea is shot down five minutes after Agent Barrett proposes it, and by Landry himself. Barrett tells them about it later (hoping they can come up with something that _will_ work); but all they can do is repeat, for Agent Barrett, why it won't: Archaeo-Anthropology and Translation briefs half the missions, and Physics and Engineering briefs the other half. They can't send Teams out through the Gate without preparing them, and even if it were physically possible, neither Dani nor Sammy is qualified to do all the briefings themselves.

Reduce the number of people who attend? Well, they've already established why Jay and Amelia will know everything whether they're there or not. Walter sees all the data that comes in from the MALPs that make the initial planetary surveys, and Graham keeps the General's calendar, so kicking either of them out won't really help much. So there isn't any way to winnow the number of people they have to keep on suspecting.

#

"We could confine everybody to Base," Sammy says.

Wednesday. SG-1, Agent Barrett, and General Landry are sitting around the Briefing Room table. Brainstorming. Still no closer to an answer than they were on Monday. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving and General Hammond is in the air right now, somewhere between Washington and here, and Cam has slept at Dani's house every night this week—hasn't slept in his own bed once since last Thursday, in fact—and he might as well _just move in_ and is it some indication of mental degeneration on her part that spies in the SGC and Cam in her kitchen have an equal weight of importance in her mind?

"For how long?" General Landry asks. Sammy shrugs. General Landry looks like he doesn't like that answer. Nobody does: for the SGC to function properly, all three shifts would have to be called in before they went into Lockdown. Things would get ... crowded.

"Ba'al would then know his efforts to gain further intelligence would be futile," Teal'c says.

"What would happen then?" Agent Barrett asks.

They all look at each other. None of them really knows. Ba'al already knows they know he has a spy here, and nothing's happened. In the sense of his spy committing suicide, at least, because nobody's died here since Galar, (though Agent Barrett says the _real_ proof will come if everybody comes back from their various Thanksgiving holidays. Dani wishes he hadn't mentioned that. No way to refuse everybody leave-or-vacation, though, without tipping their hand, and General Landry had agreed). And all these _facts_ should tell her something, she knows they should. Them, and the fact that Ba'al's running a new spy-network at all (it could be because he thinks Anubis is dead; he can't activate the surviving members of the group he had back East; the NID has gotten nearly all of them by now, and security is much tighter).

"It depends on whether or not Ba'al's agent is programmed," Dani says slowly. And to do what. And who it is. Depending on who it is, he-or-she could do anything, from try to kill themselves to try to blow up the Mountain.

"If he's programmed, he'd just kill himself," Barrett says slowly, trying to work out the puzzle in his mind. The NID is the civilian watchdog agency for the Stargate, but its members don't have the same intimate understanding of their enemies as the people who face them do.

"Depends," Cam says. He stares up at the ceiling. "Might try to kill _us_."

"You know what's weird?" Dani says absently, staring down into her coffee cup. She wonders if Cam knows how to make doughnuts.

"Dr. Jackson?" General Landry says.

"We know information is going one way—from here to Ba'al. But it doesn't seem to go the other way. Ba'al's known for a week now that we know he has a spy here. But the spy hasn't killed himself." _Unless it's someone who's gone on leave._ Her own department is nearly-deserted (civilians), and they're staring at the complete list of everybody else who's taken leave to go be with their families. She knows Cam wishes he were home for Thanksgiving. But it's Thanksgiving or Christmas; he can't get leave for both, and depending on the situation next month, he won't even get leave for Christmas.

"Unless it was someone on SG-9," Agent Barrett says.

They all look at him. He shrugs slightly. "It's my job."

Dani glances around the table. Cam doesn't like the idea, and neither does General Landry, but they all know the _Goa'uld_ can manipulate memories, and SG-9 had been spending enormous amounts of time attempting to negotiate for a device that could edit memories like a strip of film.

"If had been one of them, they'd still have needed access to the minutes of the Department Heads Meeting," Dani finally says. "And I don't think the timing works."

Sammy checks through the record (doing it herself because Agent Barrett trusts Sammy most of all of them; Dani has the times and dates and Teams and planets memorized by now, but she knows Agent Barrett doesn't trust her memory), but the timing doesn't work. SG-9 was offworld for a period of ten days covering two of the compromised missions _and_ the meeting in which they were scheduled.

"Back to Square One," Cam says with a sigh.

"Okay," Sammy says. "Maybe Ba'al hasn't told his agent he's been compromised because Ba'al's agent doesn't know he's an agent."

"Sam?" Agent Barrett says, sounding faintly alarmed.

"Colonel Carter, how can someone pass information to the _Goa'uld_ without knowing they're doing it?" General Landry asks. "Whether they know it's a _Goa'uld_ or not, they certainly know better than to discuss what goes on here with anyone outside the SGC."

(Which means either they don't have a spy at all, or their spy thinks they're working for someone else. If they think they're passing information to the NID…)

"Yes, sir," Sammy says dutifully. "But it's another possibility we have to consider."

It's almost the only one left, Dani thinks. She's just as glad right now she doesn't have to make the decisions General Landry does.

"A _real_ secret agent," Cam says, looking as if he's trying to imagine it.

"Isn't it possible?" Dani asks. 

She looks at Sammy. Sammy makes a "don't look at me" face. "The _Tok'ra_ know more about _za'tarc_ programming than we do," she says slowly. (And are _so_ likely to tell them.)

General Landry doesn't quite roll his eyes. "Then I suppose we need to see if we can get back in touch with them again. And see if they can tell us—entirely theoretically, Colonel Carter—what the limits of this programming are."

Agent Barrett closes his folder. Dani suspects he's just been doodling in the margins. "And I suppose it's time for me to go on to Round Two." He regards all of them with faint hopefulness. "I don't suppose any of you've made any new friends in the past three months?"

"I have not," Teal'c says firmly.

Dani shakes her head. July, August, September, October, November ... she's been here, offworld, the house, or at Cam's. That's about it.

"Pretty much of a homebody," Cam says, and Sammy's nodding in agreement.

"Dismissed," General Landry says, with a sigh.

"Well, that was kind of a waste of time," Cam says, as they walk down the corridor.

"I just can't figure out how the information's getting out so fast," Sammy says, as the elevator doors close on them. "Ba'al has our mission schedule faster than the Pentagon does."

None of them says what they all know: they need to figure this out _soon._

#

But the next day is Thanksgiving, and while they're on standby, they're not on Base. Agent Barrett has flown back to Washington (marshalling his resources for yet another round of interviews next week; at that point, it won't be possible to keep a lid on things any longer, but it's always possible that by Monday, he'll have some suspicious disappearances to look into; Dani doesn't know whether she hopes for that or not), and Cam has gotten up at the crack of dawn to start cooking—and they were up until midnight besides (why he calls them quick breads when they aren't, she has no idea). He's probably certifiable, but Dani thinks she's used to him by now. If the only thing his job will do to him is make him want to cook large meals for random collections of people, well ... she might almost be willing to take that as evidence of the existence of some _real_ deity somewhere in the Universe.

He wakes her up, apologizing for doing it (though he's let her get two more hours of sleep than she would on a workday) and as soon as she's had enough coffee, she's drafted to chop, mince, and "for the love of God, baby, don't let that boil over." There are pies everywhere, and, as more things begin to cook, the house starts to smells wonderful. Cam still has complaints of her oven, but mainly (now) that it's too small. There's nothing to be done about that, though, and she tells him so.

Four hours later, a little after eleven, Jonas and Teal'c arrive, dropped off by Sammy, who picked them up from the Mountain and is now heading back to her house to pack up Cassie and her share of the food. Nyan _does_ in fact, have a girlfriend, and will be spending Thanksgiving elsewhere. Too bad, since Dani thinks (from the amount of food here, and this is only half of it) they may be eating leftovers until March. Sammy stops long enough for a cup of coffee and a biscuit (just because he's been up and cooking since five, Dani discovered, didn't mean Cam wasn't going to stop and fix breakfast, even though today it was just what he called "a lick and a promise"—meaning eggs and biscuits). Dani suspects (okay, more than suspects) that Cam obsesses, just a little, on food and cooking and _taking care_ ; possibly it's a psychological survival mechanism. Over coffee and biscuits, Sammy relays the latest in a series of Strange Jay Felger Stories: this morning he phoned her to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner.

"Kinda late for that," Cam says, puzzled.

Sammy makes what Dani thinks of as her 'Felger face.' "Oh, it was really more of an excuse to be able to explain to me _he_ had plans too."

"Lives with his mother," Dani explains to Jonas.

"Dani! You know he moved out of the basement four years ago—the Security Review Board insisted," Sammy says, in another aside. "No, he's got a _girlfriend_. He said so."

"I bet she's inflatable," Dani says immediately. Jonas looks blank, Teal'c looks bland, and Cam shakes his head admiringly. Sammy shrugs.

"So he called you up this morning—to invite you to his mother's for Thanksgiving—but really to make sure you knew he had a girlfriend," Cam says, making sure he's got this right. "Babe, you've _got_ to start meeting a better class of people."

"To invite me _out_ for Thanksgiving, anyway," Sammy says meticulously. Nobody's ever met Felger's mother in person and they're all grateful (emails and phone calls don't count; if Felger ever wants to have sex, he'd better keep the object of his intentions far away from Mrs. Morton Felger). "That's Felger."

"I wonder if Chloe knows she's got competition?" Dani asks.

"She'd probably be grateful," Sammy says, getting to her feet. "I'll be back in about an hour."

#

By two o'clock they're all sitting down to dinner: General Hammond and Josie and Tessa and Kayla, Sammy and Teal'c and Cam and Dani, Cassie and Jonas Quinn.

There are (apparently) vital sports-related activities occurring today which cannot be missed: one of the things Sammy brought over was a portable television (the one she keeps in her bedroom, for those times she's too banged-up to be comfortable on the couch), and it's tucked in a corner of the living room, waiting until the meal is over. She knows Cam is TiVoing the whatever-it-is (football?) but everyone (even Josie) seems pleased they won't miss "the game."

It seems odd to have Thanksgiving and not have General Hammond sitting at the head of the table, but it _is_ her house, so that's her place. She remembers past years, and asks him to say Grace: Cam looks a little surprised, but it's more for the sake of tradition, in Dani's mind, than because she really believes in any supernatural agency that must be either placated or thanked.

Josie is impressed with everything about the meal, stunned to discover the bread and rolls (and the cranberry sauce) were made from scratch. She says she can't imagine where Cam found the time, and tells him he'll make a great catch for some lucky girl. Sammy teases her about "archaic social attitudes," but Josie's looking at Cam and looking puzzled, and Dani's lived with the military long enough to know why: officers marry to advance: married officers are promoted faster than unmarried ones, it's a fact of life. Cam's a Lieutenant Colonel. In the quasi-medieval world of the military, he should have married a long time ago if he was (as his CO would have put it) "serious about his career."

And Dani knows he _is_ serious about his career, and, well, nobody's going to pressure him to marry now that he's at the SGC, but what about before? Odd that she never wondered until now. She decides this is something she _will_ ask Sammy about, because, well, she's heard a lot about Cam's family, and a few of the funny stories about his military career, but she doesn't really have a detailed biography for him. She doubts he's nursing a broken heart, but ... was he widowed? It's possible. 

Cam (he's sitting at the foot of the table, the second most honorable place at a formal meal, but since he's cooked most of it, he's earned it) urges everyone to eat _more_. Hot breads and hot biscuits, and cornbread too, and turkey and stuffing, and ham, and _three_ kinds of potatoes—mashed, and sweet, and something that seems to be a hot potato salad, assuming that's possible. And gravy (lots of gravy) and Sam's mother's green bean casserole, and cranberry salad, and something Cam calls "ambrosia," which is Jell-O and fruit and several other things too (including sour cream, which is just weird). Cam says firmly that it's "traditional." As is the Cold Relish Tray (apparently its proper name) and Brussels Sprouts in cheese sauce, and pickled mushrooms, and there's half a dozen kinds of pie lurking in the kitchen, and ice cream, and there will be home-made whipped cream to go on the pie...

"Is this a traditional--" Jonas stops because Cassie's kicked him "--American meal?" he finishes. Dani suspects Josie Hammond figured out years ago what her father-in-law was doing under the Mountain, but Tessa and Kayla are still teenagers.

"It's a traditional American Thanksgiving," Cam says, and oh, he sounds so happy that Dani's happy too.

"You set a damned fine table, Dr. Jackson," General Hammond says.

She laughs. "Only the table is mine. Cam and Sammy did all the cooking."

At last everyone insists they can't eat one thing more. And it still looks as if they have almost as much food as they started with. Either they're going to have to invite more people next year (for the purposes of this meditation, she assumes they'll all be alive next year), or she's going to have to figure out some way to make Cam cook less. She contemplates the potential future guest list, because of the two options, more people seems the one more likely to happen.

Everyone offers to help clean up; Dani shoos them all off. She's pretty sure they all want to watch this mysterious _"The Game,"_ and if she doesn't know how to _cook_ food, she at least knows how to put it away. She's not quite sure where it's all going to _go_ , though.

Sammy comes in a few minutes later (Dani's still collecting food—leftovers, she guesses they are now—from the table, but she's got the dishwasher running at least) to gather up beer and juice and soda. They haven't been _quite_ reduced to storing it all in an ice-filled bathtub—it's in a cooler in the mud room. There's no space for it in the fridge.

"Take the tray," Dani says, because she's managed to at least keep the sterling tray unburied in the chaos the kitchen has become. They'll need it for coffee and dessert later.

"Are you sure you...?" Sammy says.

"Don't make me give you the lecture on the cultural significance of organized athletics in modern America," Dani says warningly.

Sammy laughs, and wanders off, laden tray in hand. Dani clears a little counter space and starts coffee. What she _actually_ wants to do right now is curl up in a corner and sleep. A minute or so later, Cam comes into the kitchen, carrying the turkey.

"Go watch sports," she says.

"In a while," Cam says. (Which is Camspeak—she learned a long time ago—for "no," because Cam is gentle and indirect in his refusals and denials and disagreements very nearly always. A cultural thing.)

She's taking things out of the fridge and putting them in again, trying to get everything to _fit_. She's making some progress. When she turns around again (coffee should be ready) she sees Cam is slicing all the rest of the meat off the turkey. She makes an interrogative sound.

"Gonna send care packages home with Sam and the Hammonds," he says, not looking up. "Gotta get all the meat off the carcass so we can make soup."

"Presumably that makes sense to you," she says. 

He chuckles. "Turkey soup," he says, which doesn't really tell her much. "Figure there'll be room for it in your freezer."

He's going to make soup tonight? With Cam, anything's possible. She shakes her head in bafflement and goes back out to the dining room. Table's clear. She lifts off the top tablecloth (a trick Sammy taught her) and the interliner: the cloth beneath is clean. She goes to put the soiled tablecloth into the wash, then comes back to pour herself coffee.

"You need a bigger kitchen," Cam says pensively.

" _You_ need a bigger kitchen," she answers, because that's the real truth. And Sammy's kitchen is bigger, but she doesn't really have a dining room, just a dining _area_ with a table she never uses—not for dining, anyway. It's smaller than Dani's, besides.

Cam apparently gives serious consideration to the possibility of acquiring a bigger kitchen while slicing all the meat off the turkey. Dani drinks coffee, wondering why he doesn't have one. Eighteen months, after all. Plenty of time to be sure he'd survive at the SGC. To figure out the local housing market. To buy a house, or a condo, or even just rent a decent-sized apartment, because the place he's got has a good location, it's true, but it's small and it doesn't have a garage. It's meant as transient housing and Cam, well, he isn't transient now, is he? She wonders what he's waiting for.

The carcass of the turkey, denuded of meat and emptied of stuffing, is wrapped in foil then sealed in plastic and stuffed into the chest freezer in the garage; apparently he does not plan to make soup today. The purpose of the large oblong foil roasting pans that recently took up residence in her kitchen now becomes clear: not for cooking, but for portioning: turkey and ham and stuffing and slabs of cornbread (wrapped separately in foil). Moister offerings (potatoes and vegetables and cranberry sauce) go into disposable covered plastic bowls of various sizes, and the whole is shoehorned back into the fridge.

"Now will you go watch the game?" she asks when he's done.

He sweeps the kitchen with a speaking glance: the dishwasher's full and chugging away, but every available surface in the kitchen is covered in pots. Most of them will have to be hand-washed, too: too big, too dirty, to fit in the dishwasher.

"Go. Watch. The. Game," she says firmly.

But he won't leave the kitchen until she does, and there really isn't much she can do in here right now. So she goes with him. _The Game_ actually makes more sense to Jonas than it does to her: _Tau'ri_ popular culture fascinates him, and he's been studying it as intently as he's been studying _Tau'ri_ history (neither she nor Amelia will give him up; he's too valuable to AA &T. They've decided, in fact, one of them will marry him—if necessary—to keep him on Earth). He's explaining it to her (quietly): the history of the conflict between these two teams, and the season-long process of elimination that has allowed the two of them to contest with each other today. The other adults (even Teal'c) are deeply engrossed. Cassie, Tessa, and Kayla are watching it tangentially, apparently while engaged in an electronic conversation with absent friends (or perhaps even with one another; Dani's read papers on text-message culture). But they whoop as loudly as the others do at the appropriate points.

It is a ritual activity (all aspects of it); its function being to underscore the bonding of those who watch communally. And to punctuate the archaic meal; there are more games ("sport" is perhaps more accurate, and neither "game" nor "sport" is _entirely_ accurate, Dani thinks, since all contestants must be paid in order to participate) taking place throughout the day, and there's even a channel dedicated to nothing but summaries of all the games being played, but when this one reaches its end, it's time for dessert. Pie and ice cream, and fancy coffee, courtesy of Cam's first gift to her, and Cam turns heavy cream into whipped cream with the whisk she bought, saying he's glad she finally saw sense (and purchased one, is implied), though what she'll do with the thing when he isn't here to use it is anybody's guess.

The pies are all brought out for exhibit, since that's part of the ritual, and Josie says, "oh, don't tell me you _made_ all of these, Colonel Mitchell?" and Cam smiles and says he had help (meaning her, though she wasn't much). Pumpkin and mince and pecan, and black-bottom pecan (that's the one with the chocolate), and tapioca-cherry and apple-raisin-walnut (plain apple not being fancy enough for the holiday, apparently). And in the unlikely event someone can't find something they like in all of that, three kinds of ice cream: plain vanilla for the pies, and cinnamon-pumpkin because Cam was feeling adventurous, and chocolate "just in case." In case of what, Dani isn't sure, but Cam cooks and plans menus the way she preps for missions. The way all of them prep for missions, really. Preparing for anything imaginable. Including the possibility someone wouldn't manage to like six kinds of pie and two other flavors of ice cream.

But of course that's impossible, and the only problem that arises is cutting slices small enough so everybody can taste all the pies they want to taste without (so Josie says darkly) _exploding_. And Cam announces that _of course_ he'll be sending some home with her, and she says he mustn't, and he says he must, and Dani says Josie _really_ has to say yes, because if she doesn't, terrible things will happen, and besides, some of it's going home with Sammy, too. (At least Cassie will be there to eat it if they're in lockdown, or called away; Dani hates the thought of so much food spoiling because they aren't here. Bad enough when the bread she buys spoils, but all this?)

And they linger over dessert, talking (continuing the dinner conversation) about the ordinary things they have to talk about: Josie's job at Peterson, and Tessa's plans for college (a high school senior next year, so it's time to start thinking about what comes next); a reception General Hammond went to last week in Washington (publicly, officially, he does something nebulous in Homeland Security; privately, he's securing everyone's homeland). Cam talks about how it's just about too cold to go jogging in the mornings now, about how he hopes the coming winter will be mild but he's looking forward to fitting in a skiing weekend this year if he can manage it. Ordinary table-talk, except for all the things they can't talk about; they've gotten good at avoiding those things over the years. And finally it's time for the Hammonds to leave; General Hammond will be flying back to Washington on Monday. He says he'll stop in to see them "at work" tomorrow.

On the way out the door (all of the Hammonds laden down with food, Dani's pleased to note; small recompense for all the years she, all of SG-1-as-was, were made welcome at General Hammond's table) General Hammond stops, for just a moment, and asks how things are going, and Cam is the one who answers, and he says things are going fine, and General Hammond nods just a little, looking satisfied. And Dani knows things are actually just a bit far from "fine" right now at the SGC, but apparently that's not the conversation Cam and General Hammond are having. Whatever thing they're talking about _is_ going fine. Well, she's glad something is.

With the Hammonds gone, they can talk more freely. Cassie _can't_ be the _Goa'uld_ spy, Dani knows none of them are, and Anubis destroyed Kelowna: she doesn't care what Malcolm Barrett might think: Dani's convinced Jonas is innocent as well. Of course they don't talk about the problem outright (not because Cassie doesn't have a security clearance, but because they don't want to worry her) but at least they don't have to pretend to be a bunch of ... Earthlings. Because half of them aren't. It's her and Cam and Sammy and Teal'c and Jonas and Cassie. And only Cam and Sammy really, completely, _belong here._

And it's a sort of sad statistical commentary on their lives that—of the rest of them—Teal'c is the only one who could possibly go back to his home planet. And he can't, exactly, because he's made himself a social and cultural outcast, and unless and until there really _is_ a Jaffa Free Nation, Teal'c won't really have a _place_. And Earth ought to be Dani's home (born here, raised here) and it could have been (if so many things about her life had been different) and Skaara told her once (when they freed him from Klorel, when they brought him home) Abydos would always be her home, but (now, then) her place was no longer there. And he'd been right: her place, like Teal'c's, was in the war against the _Goa'uld_ , but (like Teal'c) she'd always hoped to go home (to Abydos) _someday_. It's been more than four months now since she's known _someday_ will never come, and she tries to be used to it, but at times like this she feels as if she's been exiled all over again. She tries not to mind, because other people have lost so much more, but these ritual observances are about _family_ and _belonging_ and _place_ , and she's of-Earth enough they're capable of reminding her of what she's lost.

But Cam and Sammy settle back in with another _The Game_ , and now Jonas feels free to ask all the un-acculturated questions about Thanksgiving he's been storing up all day, and Cassie laughs and tells him about her first Thanksgiving here on Earth (all of them gathered at Janet's house, and Cassie'd barely been here a month; all of them still awkward with each other back in those days, and with one thing and another Thanksgiving dinner had ended up being take-out Chinese), and Dani tells him about the history of Thanksgiving (both true and mythologized), and Teal'c talks about a similar festival on Chulak (vaguely similar, anyway: at least it involves a large amount of food), and Cam tells a couple of Thanksgiving stories involving home and family, and Sammy tells the story about the first time she ever cooked a Thanksgiving dinner.

It's a story that's only funny because it's so long ago, and the intervening years have eased the pain: thirteen-year-old Samantha Carter, her mother only a few months dead, trying desperately to hold her family together; her father distant and grieving; Sammy blaming him for her mother's death and hating herself for it; Mark (aged ten) blaming both of them. At the time there wasn't much funny about it and the meal was a disaster in every possible way. But time changes a lot of things. A lesson, Dani knows, she should learn. She knows it intellectually; it's her business, after all: student of ancient cultures, who knows better than Dr. Danielle Jackson how much time changes things? There just hasn't been enough time yet for her to gain a suitable perspective, or even a conditional amnesia. Jack died beyond all resurrection in February; Abydos died in July; now it's November and who knows if Earth will be here at Christmas? It's been a year of death: Jack, Abydos, Kelowna, Galar, hundreds of other worlds whose names or even algorithms she doesn't know. And people: SG-2, SG-9, SG-16 ... she groups them by team designations because it's less heartbreaking than to reel off the lists of _names_. The Day of the Dead was a month ago; she doesn't remember what she was doing then, but it doesn't matter. Here in America it's a denatured remembrance, candy and costumes and pretend horrors. Just as the images on the screen before her are pretend combat, gladiatorial games etiolated by time.

"What about you?" Jonas asks, and she wrenches her mind back to the conversation at hand. The same one they had last year, actually, though Jonas wasn't there. Experiences of historical Thanksgivings.

"I didn't really grow up in America," she says. It's the short safe answer, conditionally true.

"Oh," Jonas says. "Where did you grow up?" Jonas has many fine qualities, but the ability to read social cues isn't one of them. It may be unique to him, or Kelownan society may have been profoundly different than American society. Either is reasonable.

Cam is looking at her. She knows he's curious; wants to know the answer to that question, too. Is too polite to pry.

"Egypt and South America, mostly," she says. "Thanksgiving is an American observance, primarily for family groups."

"You didn't have a family?" Jonas asks, looking puzzled.

"I'm an orphan," she says. "I was raised by the State." It's half a lie, but she really doesn't intend to go into details, here and now, for Jonas.

But he looks confused now. "On Kelowna that is—that _was_ —an honor," he says slowly. "It meant the government knew you were going to be special. I was raised by the State. I guess..."

"Yeah, pretty much backwards to the way we do things here," Cam says. "I don't suppose anybody wants more pie?"

"I don't see how you can possibly _think_ about eating," Sammy says feelingly, and Cam grins at her, and launches into a long rambling story about a Fourth of July barbecue at his folks' house, punctuated by heartfelt exhortations to the television. And then gets up to get more pie.

Of course, a couple of hours later, they _all_ manage to think about eating again. The traditional (so Cam says) Thanksgiving Evening Meal: hot turkey open-face sandwiches, with stuffing and gravy and a liberal garnish of cranberry sauce. While Cam's building them, Dani builds a fire. Suitable to the day.

They eat in the living room, sprawled about. Jonas doesn't sprawl very well, but he's learning. Sammy says (lazily, regretfully) it's just about time to get Jonas and Teal'c back to the Mountain. They could probably keep Teal'c out overnight, but not Jonas, and it's not fair to rub Jonas's special (inferior) status in his face by sending him back alone.

And Cam says he'll drive them, and Sammy says he's just trying to get out of the pots and pans, and Cam says he cooked, so why should he have to wash up? The two of them bicker like siblings (it's hard, sometimes, to imagine they were ever lovers; not that Dani actually wants to imagine it) until Dani says she can easily solve the entire problem by simply throwing out everything that still needs to be washed. And Cam says she'd never do that because it'd break his heart, and Sam will wash up because if she doesn't, he won't let her take the leftovers home with her. And Sammy makes a rude noise and says, "try and stop me, Mitchell," and Cam offers to wrestle her for ownership of the last half of the pecan pie and she says she knows damned well he'd cheat. 

And Cam laughs, and gets to his feet, and says some things are worth cheating over, and says he expects the three of them to have made a good start on those pots by the time he gets back.

And Cassie says, "Me?" in tones of outrage, and Cam points a finger at her and says, "You. Or do you think you've gotten too fancy to do dishes, Miss Cassandra Frasier?"

And Cassie rolls over on her back and closes her eyes and announces _she can't move._ And it's _all Cam's fault._

And Sammy says, "Hey," in mock indignation. And Cassie says, "And yours too, Aunt Sam." But she doesn't sound very convincing.

And Cam gets his coat, and Teal'c and Jonas get their coats (and Teal'c gets his hat; another of Cam's many gifts to him) and Dani levers herself to her feet to see them to the door. It takes them about half an hour to get out the door, because (mysteriously, though she's grateful) they're taking food along with them. She can't imagine what they're going to do with it; it's not as if there's any place for Teal'c or Jonas to store it at the SGC. But then they're gone, and Dani drags herself torpidly off to the kitchen. Possibly a little more coffee will cut through the tryptophan overload. And, well, pots and pans. She starts by unloading the dishwasher. There's the faint possibility some of the items still to be washed will actually fit. Sammy wanders in while she's doing that, and Dani asks where Cassie is.

"On the couch. I think she's falling asleep. Sluggard," Sammy says.

Dani manages to get a couple of the smaller pans and serving trays into the dishwasher. She's pretty sure it will clean them. She closes it—carefully—and starts it running. The roaster will be the worst. It's been soaking. She pushes up her sleeves and starts running more water into it. Sammy moves around the kitchen, organizing the rest of the pots. Triage.

"Why isn't Cam married?" Dani asks.

Sammy laughs, a short chuff of surprise. "That's sudden."

"Josie said at dinner and I... I know why you aren't married, Sammy, and anyway, you got close once, but the rules are different for men, even if they're unwritten rules, so..."

"True." Sammy thinks about the question for a while, obviously deciding whether—and how—to answer. Interlocking loyalties can be difficult to navigate. And just when Dani thinks she isn't going to get an answer at all (silence is an answer too, albeit an ambiguous one), Sammy sighs and says: "Cam has loved a lot of women. But I don't think he'd ever consider marrying unless he was _in love_. And he's got pretty high standards for that."

"His career," Dani says in protest, and Sammy says, "Even so."

Dani scrubs the pan, up to her forearms in greasy soapy water, glad to have something to concentrate on that allows her to let the conversation drop. She doesn't want to take the discussion to the next (obvious) level, even though Sammy is her dearest (only surviving, and she misses all the conversations she will never have with Janet) female friend. Because both of them know Cam is _in love_ now, and with who. She wonders if he's talked to Sammy about it. She hopes, actually, he has. Because (god knows) he can't talk to _her_. And he ought to be able to talk to someone, because talking's never (in her experience) solved a problem, but sometimes it makes it clearer, and it would be nice if he could talk himself out of this. Or if Sammy could talk him out of it. She wonders if that's possible. If that's something either of the two of them—Cam, Sammy—would be willing to try. Cam isn't made for hopeless passions, for doomed and unrequited loves. He's made to love and be loved: if anyone should be treated fairly by the world, it's Cam. He's kind and loving and brave and honorable and good. He deserves to receive those same qualities back. From the world. From ... someone.

She wishes (knowing, reluctantly, despairingly, she doesn't really wish it) the two of them (Cam, Sammy) could just fall in love with each other. Again, or for the first time, because apparently (from what Sammy's just said) they've never been _in love_ with each other before. And it would, oh, not solve so many problems (not with the two of them being on the same Gate Team, not really), but make both of them happy. And she'd like both of them to be happy. She wonders (hardly for the first time, but now more intensely) what he wants _(from her)_ in absolute explicit terms. If she had unconditional knowledge of the set term of Earth's survival she might even be tempted to try to give it to him, providing she knew—unambiguously—exactly what it was. Or (more accurately) she'd try to counterfeit it for him for the limited period of the fixed interval of their joint existence, because she's reasonably certain whatever it is he wants from her is something she no longer possesses. 

But there's the possibility they're all going to survive, isn't there? In which case, Cam needs to learn to live with disappointment and she ... she'll hold on to what's left of her sanity for as long as she can. And try to keep her losses bearable.

"Hey? Earth to Dani?" Sammy says.

"And you wonder why I don't cook," she mutters in oblique response, as her fingers skid through soap and grease. She pours the slurry out into the sink, and fills the roaster again. Adds soap. Making progress.

"You know," Sammy says. Neutral interrogative statement; useful for initiating a conversation; intrinsically meaningless.

Dani glances at her. She knows too many things, and none of them useful. "You should date," she says ambiguously.

Sammy makes a rude noise. "So Mark tells me. He keeps trying to fix me up with his old buddies from the Denver PD. The last thing I need is to hook up with some cop who isn't going to take "National Security" for an answer."

Dani's turn to be amused now. "You don't think they'd buy the Deep Space Telemetry story?" she asks.

"For about five minutes. Until, oh, the second time I blew off a date because I was offworld. Or showed up with two cracked ribs."

"Or a black eye," Dani says helpfully.

"Broken fingers," Sammy says. 

"Ribbon weapon burns."

"Oh that's always a good one."

"Lord above, Cupcake, what happened to you? Now, don't tell me you got into trouble all the way down there in that-there NORAD place." Dani's voice is mocking, her intonation slipping into the West Texas drawl of Sammy's Pentagon _bete noir_ , some General whose name Dani can't remember now, but who'd always called Sammy "Captain Cupcake." When he could get away with it. When no one else was around. Oh, if only he could see his "Captain Cupcake" now.

"Tanning machine accident," Sammy says blandly, and they both laugh.

One more go-round and the roaster is squeaky-clean. Dani grabs towels and sets it on the dinette table to dry. Now she can fill the sink with soapy water. Sammy shoulders her aside, brandishing the sauce-pan that held The Brussels Sprouts In Cheese Sauce. Dani goes to get more coffee.

By the time Cam gets back (vaguely surprising he's come back here instead of going home; it's been a long day for him, surely the man wants to _go to bed_ ; they have to be up and at the Mountain at the usual time tomorrow) she and Sammy have gotten the worst of the offenders scrubbed up and drying; the first load is out of the dishwasher (all clean) and a second load is in and running, and the sink is filled with more. Cam walks into the kitchen and absently kisses Sammy on the cheek.

"See you got a lot of help here," he says, nodding toward the living room.

"We did _fine_ ," Sammy says.

"Yeah, well, you wake her up and head on home now," Cam says. He opens the fridge and starts pulling out _things_ : turkey and dressing and chimera pies (whole pies assembled from pieces of various others). He's sending two home with Sammy and Cassie and there will still be two here. Maybe he'll take one with him. That's only fair.

Cassie's indignant at being awakened; Sammy is ruthless about it (Dani hears squeaking). Cassie comes wandering into the kitchen, rumpled, yawning, professing surprise they did all those dishes without her. Sammy, following, laughs the all-knowing laugh of someone who's lived with Cassie for years. And Dani and Cam help the two of them out to the car, because they're sending them home with too damned much food for two people to carry. How they get it out of the car and into the house at the other end is their problem.

And Sammy and Cassie drive away, and she and Cam go back into the house.

Thanksgiving is about tradition, and there's one they started last year they didn't quite get around to this year, with all the (not quite) strangers around. Still time for it, though. She walks over to the sideboard, gets out the Scotch. Glances at him, and when he nods, gets out the bourbon, too. She leaves them there and goes back to the kitchen for glasses. Comes back. Pours. Hands him his. "I'm grateful we got to have another Thanksgiving," she says quietly. _And that we were all here and alive for it._

He looks blank for just an instant, then gets it. "I'm grateful for the chance to get a good meal into all of you," he says. "And that we were all here to eat it."

There are other things she's grateful for, but some of them are too painful to say. She's grateful Jonas is alive, and here. "I'm grateful Cassie was here," she says instead.

"And that we got to invite company," Cam says. "I'n't a proper Thanksgiving without at least half-a-dozen people you a'n't related to at the table. Oughta see if we can do better next year."

Just now she's willing to let the "we" pass without comment, in the face of his cheerful belief there will _be_ a next year. She'd like it to be true. More than she can express. "You'll need a bigger kitchen," is all she says.

And he smiles at her, eyes laughing, daring her to share in the joke, share in his belief. "Baby," he says, "we will _make do_. We always have."

And she's not quite sure who he means—his family, or SG-1, or (maybe) both. Because they're both his family, and she's sure he knows that. So she nods, willing (just for tonight) to let his vision of a future extending another twelve months go uncontested.

She isn't surprised when he puts another log on the fire and takes another turn around the kitchen, drink in hand, to see how things are doing in there (no different than they were ten minutes ago when they emptied out the fridge to send Sammy and Cassie home) before coming back to settle down on the couch beside her. He stretches and sighs. "Best part of the day," he says.

"When it's over?" she asks, though she's sure that isn't what he means.

"Sauce," Cam says lazily. "When ever'body's been fed, and the house settles down to quiet, and you can take a little time to catch your breath."

"You've been working all day," she says. Because the house is too damned quiet for her liking sometimes, especially at night, as if its somehow stored up the memories of years within its walls and at night they seep out again. And that isn't possible, but it's a fantasy her mind tries to persuade her of, more and more over time, with the relentless persistent illogic of uncontrolled imagination. Flights of fancy, they used to call them, but her fancies are baroque to the point of delirium, and decidedly earthbound. The dead (under most circumstances) stay dead. And her dead are slain past all resurrection.

"It's a nice change," Cam says. She looks at him, surprised. He shrugs, just a little. "Oh, you know, half the things we start up we have to leave off in the middle, one way or another. But you put a meal on the table and feed people, and you know you've done a good thing. And you carry it through, start to finish."

"It has an end," she says. "And you know just what you've done."

"Nice sometimes," Cam says, agreeing.

The thought of endings—good endings, tasks completed and done well—is an appealing one. She's careened through life leaving things half-done behind her, always. A First Contact Team isn't a place to expect to see projects through: always going in, starting things, moving on. That doesn't bother her as much as the war she's fighting—not a metaphorical war, but a real one—and wars, by definition, should end _(with victory for the heroes: by definition, the side upon which she fights)_ because the concept of an endless war is a special definition of Hell. And all wars are wars of attrition, and there are so many things they simply can't afford to lose. Or they'll have lost the war itself. 

They can't afford to lose this war.

"We'll all be home by Christmas," she says aloud, and Cam laughs, more startled than amused.

"You're tired," he says, and puts an arm around her shoulder.

"I'm not," she says, just to be contrary. She leans into him _(oh, shouldn't, mustn't, take, seek, the care, the comfort he offers so heedlessly...)_ Tomorrow they'll go back to the war. Tonight they don't have to.

#

Friday. Back at work. Starting the unofficial countdown: who, of all their personnel (civilian, military) that scattered to the four winds in the past week, is going to come back?

Agent Barrett has returned. With him are two people Dani's never met: a woman (Agent Flores, first name Maria) and a man (Agent Bishop, first name Timothy). The first thing that happens is that Flores and Bishop take her off to do the _same damned interview_ Barrett did last week. Cam wants to sit in, and is politely and inflexibly denied.

"Look," she says, about two hours in to the Flores and Bishop Show. "Agent Barrett has twelve hours of film of—amazingly—me answering these exact same questions. Could you guys just go watch that? I have work to do."

"I'd think you'd be more interested in cooperating, Dr. Jackson," Agent Bishop says.

"Yeah, thinly-veiled threats are _definitely_ going to find where our leak is coming from," she says. "Because guys? It isn't me."

"You kept SG-1 from going to Galar because you knew the _Goa'uld_ were there," Agent Flores says.

"Because I _guessed_ the _Goa'uld might be_ there. And a couple of hours later we went to Galar anyway, were captured, tortured, barely escaped with our lives..."

"So you say."

"Weren't the medical reports convincing enough for you?"

They're trained professionals, but they're investigators, not really interrogators. They've been trained to keep their game faces on, but their body-language is far more informative. They think she's the enemy. Lying to them. "Certainly your team was captured, Dr. Jackson. But you got off rather lightly, considering." Flores.

She closes her eyes and hears Cam's screams in her mind.

"And you have to admit it was a very convenient escape." Bishop. They're double-teaming her. If they'd bothered to read her file, they'd know she's been tortured by experts. Interrogated by experts, too.

"We're SG-1. We've trained for years for just that sort of scenario. I'm glad it looked convenient to you. We barely managed to escape: if Ba'al hadn't wanted to gloat, we wouldn't have. Would you like to hear my lecture on _Goa'uld_ psychology? I usually give it as an entry-level presentation to Gate Team applicants, but you sound as if you could use it."

"Another time, Dr. Jackson," Flores says.

"The _Goa'uld_ Ba'al is the individual who held your former team leader captive for an extended period, isn't he?" Agent Bishop asks.

"If you don't know, you're in the wrong line of work." Jack's been dead for almost nine months now. He was gone for longer _(years)_. The year before he took the last _(ultimately fatal)_ Ancient download, he'd been Ba'al's prisoner _(tortured to death again and again)_ , and the organization that was riddled with snakes time and again over the next two years wants to suggest _that_ as an event that built a bridge of complicity between her and Ba'al?

She had Apophis in her hands once, and felt pity for his host. If she could get her hands on Ba'al she'd make his host scream until both host and _Goa'uld_ begged for death. She says nothing else, and they move on. She wonders if they think she's simply going to _confess_ to being the spy they want out of boredom and save them the trouble of looking for the real one. But after four hours of going round-and-round-and-round, they break for lunch. She's obviously not going to be let out of the interrogation room: an airman brings trays and (here's a surprise) Cam. He's polite, inflexible, and unwilling to be removed. ("It's lunchtime," he says, as if that's both explanation and excuse for his presence.)

"They letting you out of here soon?" he asks, sitting down on her side of the table (he has to drag a chair around to do it) and helping himself to half the sandwich from her tray.

"No," she says waspishly (not enough fucking goddamned coffee this morning and they wouldn't give her any during the "interview"). "I'm the _Goa'uld_ spy in the SGC. Hadn't you heard?"

"Thought Agent Barrett cleared you." He opens the bread and inspects the filling suspiciously. The Commissary tuna hasn't killed anyone yet.

"So did I. I figured it might have counted for something that I was the one who mentioned the problem in the first place. Or the fact it continued at times when I couldn't possibly have passed any information to anybody owing to the fact I was, oh, several thousand light-years away. But I suppose _logic_ isn't the NID's strong suit."

He nods meditatively, seemingly-oblivious to the fact Bishop and Flores are sitting right there on the other side of the table. "I suppose they have to be thorough. Hey, do you think they're gonna get around to me soon? Because, you know, I was really kinda hoping to get home and watch that game tonight."

"Um ... game?"

"Sure, sure, I know we saw most of it yesterday. But it's a lot better on a big color set. And I TiVoed the parade, too. You know you'll want to see that."

"Parade," she echoes blankly.

"The Thanksgiving Day Parade." He smiles at the two NID agents, who are by now staring at him as if he's _crazy_ , and at the moment she's in full sympathy. "You're not going to say you never watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?"

"Um..." God help her, she's actually trying to _remember._

"Guess not," Cam says sadly. "She really does work too hard," he says to the two NID agents. "I just about have to drag her out of here most nights." He reaches for her coffee. She grabs it back. If she doesn't get coffee soon she may need to kill somebody. He takes her cookie instead. Fine. She'll make him pay for that later, though.

And then he _waits_ at them. Smiling, friendly, and there is _no way in hell_ short of heavy ordinance they're going to shift him before he's willing to move, because god knows she's tried. They say they really need to get back to work. And Cam smiles, and says fine, and asks them who they want to see next. And they actually shuffle a bit (as much as it can be done sitting) and Bishop says actually, they aren't done with Dr. Jackson yet, and Cam (still smiling) asks them when they think they _will_ be done with her, seeing as she's got a lot of work to do, and well, he guesses they know how it is when the paperwork piles up on your desk, now, don't they?

And he doesn't move.

And just as Flores is about to say something, Cam says he knows how busy they all are, and he's pretty sure they both got yanked out of their holidays with their folks to come on down here, and he's sure there's a file a mile thick on this already, and he knows for a fact there's hours and hours of film. And if they'd like to take the time to go over it before deciding what else they need to do, he can have Isolation Quarters set up for them. More comfortable than here, and it's even got a kitchen, and he can get the Commissary to stock it, and anything else they need, they can just give him a call. And before she quite can figure out what's happening, all four of them are on their feet, and Cam's at the door giving orders to the SFs on guard and the airman on post, and then he's walking the two agents off down the hall, and she's free. (She guesses she won't take him to task for that cookie after all.)

She doesn't see much of Cam for the rest of the day, but she's busy. Urgent matters that can't be put off for even half an hour, and trying to make sure all of her wandering specialists are accounted for. A good third of them won't be back until Monday (taking the advantage of the long weekend), and that's disturbing, because in the eyes of the military (still, always) the Civilian Support side of the Program is, well, a little less _sound_ than the military side, no matter how vital. She checks, though, since all travel plans have to be signed off on both by General Landry and their Department Head (in practice, they're often signed off on by Nyan, who's grown adept at forging her signature over the years). Dr. Winchester is in Boston. Dr. Kiplinger is in San Francisco. Dr. Mertz is in Indiana. Everyone else is (or should be) at home.

She goes down to Sammy's, and receives empirical proof that the Nerds have even less of a life than the Geeks: only two members of Sammy's department are absent, both civilians who traveled out-of-state for the holiday. "Felger's here," Sammy says with a faint sigh.

"Did he show you a picture of his inflatable girlfriend?"

Sammy sighs again, and from the sound Dani imagines her morning, while not spent in the company of the NID, may have been just as fraught, because Felger is enthralled with Sammy in the way people are supposed to be obsessed with movie stars, and he usually keeps a tight rein on it, because he's (pretty much) Earthside Support (not on the Teams, though he's Gate-certified, and she still shudders when she thinks of the "rescue" he and Coombs pulled once), and that means comparatively easy to bounce out of the Program if he becomes a nuisance to someone who is ... less easy to replace, though nobody here at the Mountain would be truly easy to replace. If he _were_ sent packing, though, Felger would just take his mother and go back to MIT (he's—technically—a Lecturer in Residence there) and who would they get to replace him? He's an ass-kissing lunatic (who, it is reliably rumored, plays with dolls), but if he weren't brilliant, he wouldn't be here.

At least, since he's neither missing nor dead, they can rule Felger out as their _Goa'uld_ spy. He'd be an unlikely candidate anyway: too much of a emotional starfucker (Sammy may be his not-so-secret crush, but he's actually got a deranged fixation on all the members of SG-1: he joined Cam's basketball team on the strength of it) to ever consider giving aid-and-comfort to their enemies. (Or even to tell tales out of school to their alleged friends.)

"Her name," Sammy says in long-suffering tones, "is Valerie. She's a model."

Dani snorts in disbelief. "He's dating a _hooker_?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. Does he know? Of course he doesn't know. Does his _mother_ know?"

"Do you think I actually talked to Felger long enough to find out whether his mother had met Valerie-the-Model?" Sammy demands incredulously.

"Oh, my god. Sammy, you _have_ to! It's for Science!"

"That would be anthropology. And therefore, _your_ field," Sammy shoots back.

"I am _not_ talking to Felger," Dani says firmly.

"Then I guess we'll never know," Sammy says heartlessly.

"He's a physicist. Your field," Dani suggests.

Sammy shakes her head. "Double doctorate, Theoretical Math and Engineering. He did his doctoral thesis on the topology of N-space."

"You say that as if it should have meaning for me."

Sammy won't budge, but Dani figures she's got other methods of finding out what she wants to know. There's Chloe.

Dr. Chloe Ondaatje is _not_ a Lecturer in Residence anywhere at all, nor is she as brilliant as Felger. On the other hand, she's damned smart, and far more stable. Her specialty is something to do with computers, but whether she programs them, builds them, or blows them up, Dani isn't quite sure: considering she's at the SGC, probably all three. Whatever it is Chloe does, it dovetails closely enough with whatever Felger does that the two of them share a lab.

When she leaves Sammy, Dani heads over to Chloe's office. Chloe _has_ an office (even though it's tiny), because many years ago there was an unspoken agreement reached (between her and General Hammond) that it would constitute cruel and unusual working conditions if there weren't a place she could go—and a door she could lock—to get away from Jay Felger. Today the door isn't locked; Dani pushes it open. Chloe's at her desk.

"Dani," she says. "Hi. C'mon in. I think he's off getting doughnuts or something."

The office is preternaturally neat; she has no trouble finding a place to sit. Dani comes in and closes the door. No need to ask who "he" is. 

"What brings you down to the Hard Sciences?" Chloe asks.

"Gossip," Dani answers shamelessly.

"What, about those NID guys? Is this another security review? Because my neighbors were really pissed off by the last one. Half of them decided I was a lesbian and the other half think I'm a Communist."

Dani snorts. "Yes, it's a security review, but I don't think they're going to bother your neighbors this time."

"Better not," Chloe says darkly. "Because if I lose my mortgage and I have to move in with my brother's family..."

"You won't," Dani says hastily. "If you have any trouble like that, tell Sammy or me. Or Cam. We'll fix it."

Chloe gets the faintly-preoccupied look on her face that (Dani is resigned to this by now) nearly all of the women on the Base get when Cam's name is mentioned. "You had him for Thanksgiving, didn't you?" she says.

_She makes it sound as if he was the main course._ "Depending on your terms," Dani says. "He did the cooking. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be eating leftovers until March." Because they're all still at her house. Maybe Cam will pick them up tonight. He'd better. If they're doing Team Night tonight (and she assumes they are) they might be able to make a dent in them.

Chloe sighs. "And he cooks," she says, which is (Dani also knows) the ritual antiphon to these conversations about Cam. Which she never wants to have, and has been having almost since the first week he showed up at the SGC. _"So handsome. So nice. And he cooks."_ All true. And he also happens to be _crazy,_ as proved by ... something she isn't going to think about right now.

"But I guess you didn't come down here to talk about Colonel Mitchell," Chloe says wistfully. "After all, you see him every day."

Dani wonders if exposure to whatever toys the P&E wonks play around with down here all the time causes a strange form of mental aberration whose only known symptom is a fixation on one or all of the members of SG-1. Sammy would be immune, of course: she's _on_ SG-1. But there's Felger. And now... But no. Everything female in AA &T loses the ability to form a coherent sentence in Cam's presence as well (she's being unreasonable, but not entirely so).

"Well, actually, Sammy and I were trying to settle a bet about Dr. Felger's new girlfriend."

_"Valerie?"_ Chloe looks cross and exasperated and long-suffering all at once. "Oh, god, she's all he talks about."

"So she's, um..."

"Real?" Chloe snickers unkindly. "Oh, yes. I even saw her a couple of weeks ago—I had to go to his place to pick up some files I needed, because his internet was out. And I saw her coming out of his apartment. First he gets all huffy and swears me to secrecy—because he says she's terribly shy—then he backs me into a corner and spends half an hour bragging about her. About how she's beautiful, and cultured, and sophisticated—and of course, appreciates _him_."

"And she's a model," Dani says. 

Chloe looks blank. "No," she says. "Jay told me she's a commodities broker."

"Huh," Dani says. "He told Sammy she was a model."

Chloe shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe she could be. I thought they had to be tall, though. She was about my height—maybe a little taller. Black hair." (Chloe is a couple of inches shorter than Dani.) "Anyway, you know that's the kind of thing Jay lies about. Next he'll be saying—I don't know—she's an international heiress. Or a spy or something."

That actually makes sense, knowing Felger. "So where'd he meet her?"

Chloe snickers again. "In the basement. She lives in his building. _His_ version of the story is about how he rescued her underwear from a fate worse than death by the application of his manly laundry skills. You'd think he was fighting off a horde of-- Of _Goa'uld_ or something, instead of telling her how much soap to put in."

Dani nods again, but she's still puzzled. On the surface, it all checks out, though—Felger's found a girlfriend who's even crazier than he is—so she lets it go.

"Thanks," she says, getting to her feet. "Hold out for an autographed picture. That should shut him up."

"So which one of you wins?" Chloe asks curiously.

Dani sighs. "Sammy does. I'd have bet there wasn't a woman on Earth who'd date Jay Felger."

#

Whatever Cam's done with Bishop and Flores, it sticks, because they don't bother her again for the rest of the day. Cam does, though. Around 1700 he shows up in her office, and points out that if they're going to get over to her place and empty out her fridge and back to his place before Sam and Teal'c and Cassie show up, they'd better hustle. As if she's ever seen Cameron Mitchell hustle in his _life_. Well, when it didn't involve lives at stake. Or, okay, sports equipment. But if the wreck of yesterday's dinner is in his kitchen, it won't be in hers, so she logs out and shuts down and tells Jonas and Nyan she's leaving and follows Cam out.

She thought they'd be in-and-out of her house in fifteen minutes or so, but he lied to her. He doesn't just want to pack up the leftovers. He wants to _do the rest of the dishes_.

She points out that they're hers (mostly). That she'll loan him anything he needs to prepare tonight's meal—hell, she'll _give_ them to him. Free.

It doesn't work, of course. "Nothing like coming home to a clean kitchen," Cam says. "Won't take long."

"Oh, god," she wails. "Why don't you just _move in here_?"

He grins at her and starts rolling up his sleeves. "I'll wash. You dry."

It doesn't actually take long; half an hour later they're on the road again. That's not the _point_ , though. She hates losing arguments. And it's actually hard to remember the last one she won with Cam. And it sure as hell isn't because she _agrees_ with him all the time (any of the time). Because if she weren't going crazy all by herself (a joke which stopped being either a joke or funny several years ago) he'd be driving her there. But she owes him ... more than she actually wants to articulate (as if not naming a thing makes it less real). And if she had any suspicion at all that he noticed he was winning, it would be intolerable. But he doesn't seem to. In The Universe According To Cam, whatever's going on here isn't a contest with a winner and a loser. Which is also annoying, though in a (marginally) less-annoying way.

They arrive at his apartment. Even with two of them, it takes more than one trip to bring everything inside. Once it's all in and he's laying things out on the counter, preparing to turn leftovers into dinner, Cam tells her Sam called while he was on the road. Cassie's begging off on them tonight: a date.

"She's got plans for the two of you tomorrow, Sam said, though."

She's already trying to think of some way out of whatever Cassie has planned, and Cam is regarding her sternly. "You work too hard," he says. "And Cassie's family, so after breakfast, you scoot on over to Sam's. You took care of her all those years. She wants to give back a little."

And Dani knows it's true, and knows, further, that Life (their lives, Earth's life) is uncertain: this may be the last time she sees Cassie. Ever. But...

"Laundry," she says. Because Saturday is Cam's day to do laundry at _The House_ , and she knows the machines in the mud-room are both gentler and more efficient than the ones in the communal laundry room here. (Why doesn't the man _move_?)

And he cocks his head and smiles a bit, and says, "Still got your keys. If...?"

"Oh of course it is!" she says quickly. "Just don't ... buy any groceries."

And he laughs, and promises he won't, and she goes to the fridge to get them both a beer.

#

Sammy has been keeping secrets from her. For _ten years_.

Sammy is a secret Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade junkie. She says there's an even better parade on New Year's Day, called the Rose Parade (which Dani has apparently either slept through—when she's been on Earth—or missed by virtue of being ... elsewhere ... or—also possible—watched and didn't notice), which leads inevitably to a discussion of something called the Rose Bowl (sports).

The Macy's Parade is entertaining because it also (apparently) provides a showcase for contemporary popular culture, and while she doesn't expect to know who the hell any of these people are (and doesn't care) or why they're being (to coin a phrase) paraded, it's amusing to see Sammy can't identify a lot of them either. Cam does better, of course, but Teal'c knows _all_ of them: who they are, what they're famous for, and (frequently) some entertaining bit of scandal connected with their lives.

Dani thinks (a little wistfully) of the days when Teal'c needed her to gloss even the most obvious slang and footnote every cultural reference. Those days, inevitably, are gone, and she misses them a little. She wonders how he feels, to have become so acculturated to a world through which (even now) he still can't move freely. And what if (impossible yet wonderful thought) they win, and the _Goa'uld_ are all destroyed, and Teal'c goes home? Will it be home to him still, after so long becoming ... alien?

"There's Santa Claus!" Cam says, at the end of the parade. "A'ight! Now _that_ is the official start of the Christmas Season!"

Sammy groans. "Cassie wants to go to Chapel Hills tomorrow."

"It'll be fun," Cam says.

" _You're_ not going," Dani points out.

" _I_ am going to be doing laundry," Cam says virtuously, managing to sound just a little smug about it. "And when you all come back from the stores and whatever else you've got planned, I'll cook you dinner."

#

Cam doesn't wake her in the morning, because he never does on Saturday mornings, so they get to Chapel Hills late. The mall's already jammed. (Apparently there are sales.) The damned holiday is a month away, and Dani does nearly all of her shopping for it on-line anyway (the rest in her favorite liquor store). But Cassie's talking about all the past Decembers when Janet and Sammy would take her to this store or that, and about how she won't be here early enough in December to get it all done (won't be sure Sammy will be here when she comes back in December, she doesn't say), so she wants to do it now. And Cassie's gone a long time without mentioning Janet's name at all, editing every reference to her second mother out of her life, so if she's willing to remember the good times now, Dani and Sammy will conspire to help.

"What do you think I ought to get Cam?" Cassie asks.

"Who?" Dani really isn't listening. She's transfixed by the spectacle of the sixty-foot tall artificial tree that occupies the center court. The ornaments are proportional. At its foot, freakishly dwarfed by the trick of perspective, is a large gilt throne on a raised platform upon which sits a man dressed as Santa Claus. The throne is set off by velvet ropes, and more velvet ropes form an aisle along which parents and children shuffle. The purpose is to get one's photo taken with Santa. _"Cameron,"_ Cassie says, poking Dani. "What are _you_ getting him?"

"I haven't thought about it yet," Dani says, sliding out of Cassie's reach. Too much noise, too many people, and at least three different songs—unidentifiable—being played at top volume. Maybe _this_ is why Gate Teams go crazy.

"Maybe he'd like a sweater," Cassie suggests.

"His family knits," Dani says. Cassie's met them, she remembers, and she hasn't.

"Well, yeah, I know, but--"

"Come on," Sammy says, back from consulting the Directory. "It's over this way."

If Dani were actually attempting to do any shopping of her own (unthinkable) this outing would be worse than it is. But she isn't, so all she has to do is follow Cassie and Sammy around, and hold things. (Cassie has a list. She's always been very organized.) And after about four hours, even Cassie is tired enough and hungry enough to call a halt, so they're let to leave the mall and make their way to the Chinese restaurant nearby (stopping at the Starbuck's in the mall first because the Hunan Wok has many wonderful qualities, but it doesn't serve coffee). They eat lightly, because Cam's cooking dinner, and that's only a few hours away.

After lunch they head downtown (where Dani's favorite places are; the ones she'd take Cassie on their Saturday outings) and spend a couple of hours just walking. Cassie says "do you remember" and "remember when" as if the events she's conjuring out of memory are so much more than seven years ago, or six, or five, or three. But time is a variable thing. The events Cassie is trying to summon back, to fix firmly in her memory past all destruction, belong to her childhood. Cassie is an adult now. Childhood is over, and even if she doesn't understand all that means (because no one can, not in advance) she suspects. And so she's trying to defend her past against her future, but it can't be done. The future reaches out and changes the past. Always. Everyone teaches that the past is immutable, but it isn't. It exists, as much as it exists anywhere, in memory, and memory is the most fragile thing there is. Infinitely changeable.

Finally they decide to head back. It's a good thing they leave early, because normally it's a fairly quick trip: jump on I-25 and keep going. But today there's a big pileup on the Interstate—they see it in time to get off the highway—and they're stuck with trying to figure out how to get to Cam's the long way. They won't be late. They just won't be as early as they were going to be. At least they aren't lost.

"Isn't that Felger's place?" Dani says idly.

"I can't believe you know that," Sammy says.

She knows where Felger lives because Jay Felger is a brilliant idiot with computers, and intermittently-paranoid, and because he idolized Jack, and Jack couldn't stand him. And because there have been times (since Felger was turfed out of his mother's basement) when SG-1 needed something he was working on _right now_ , and Felger (intermittently-paranoid) is always installing unapproved commercial security software on his laptop, which (among other things) locks up his Internet connection and uninstalls his SGC security software, meaning someone has to go to his house (apartment) and _get_ the whatever-it-is. And Jack wouldn't go, and he refused to tell Sammy to go, and Teal'c _couldn't_ go, and that left her. Felger thinks she's brilliant, and one of Earth's Great Heroes, and his comrade-in-arms, but he prefers tall blondes. Or he used to. (Valerie?)

"I know a lot of things," she says. "Hey. Stop."

"What?" Cassie says, pulling over.

"Felger's girlfriend lives here," Dani says, getting out of the car.

"And ... what? You want to prove she exists?" Sammy asks, getting out on the other side.

"Yes. No. I don't know," Dani says. She's not sure why she's here—or what she's doing here. She's just here. 

She walks quickly across the street to the complex. Sammy and Cassie follow. In defiance of all practicality for the local weather, the complex has exterior arcades. It looks like some interstate motel chain. Certainly Felger could do better (he makes almost as much as she does) but she suspects the transitory nature of the accommodation of being a sop to Mother Felger. Were Felger to acquire a more permanent-seeming residence, it would be a clear indication to her that he was Leaving Her Forever, and not making a temporary separation mandated by his (so very important) work. Dani is certain that whatever residence Felger keeps back East is (a) equally transient or (b) a lavish maternally-controlled nest. She crosses the parking lot heading for the block of units Felger lives in. Suddenly Sammy grabs her and yanks her back. She looks up. Sammy's making a "bit into a lemon" face.

The three of them run. Not back to the car (no cover) but along the block of apartments. Sammy leads, outrunning her and Cassie. Whatever danger it is, it's more important for Sammy to get away than for the three of them to stay together. At the end of the next block, Sammy whips around the corner and grabs each of them as they get there. Cassie is panting (coming from sea-level to over a mile high and still not entirely acclimated) and Dani's heart is beating harder than the short sprint can entirely account for. "What?" she whispers shakily. "What? What?"

" _Naquaadah_ ," Sammy says grimly. "Let's hope I got us out of there in time."

_"Goa'uld?"_ Cassie asks, sounding scared and furious, and Sammy shakes her head, but she's not quite sure. Sammy starts pulling up the parka she's wearing, scrabbling at the small of her back. (And thank god, Dani thinks, Sammy brought a handgun on a Christmas shopping expedition, but anything small enough to carry concealed will be too small to do any good against snake or Jaffa.) She looks around the corner of the building. Two people in the parking lot, heading toward one of the cars. Felger. A woman. White parka. Black hair.

_Vala._

Unreality and realization hit her in the chest like hammerblows, making her dizzy. Vala. It's Vala. Here, on Earth. Murderer of Abydos, _Goa'uld_ agent...

Felger's girlfriend. Vala. Valerie. Dani's lips move soundlessly, but no sound comes. Sammy presses her against the wall, leaning against her, preparing to take the shot. "Oh, fuck," she says softly, but her voice is slightly uncertain. Dani's the one who's spent the most time with Vala.

"Yes," Dani whispers back.

They watch as Felger and "Valerie" share an embrace, then "Valerie" gets into her car—it's something small and red—and Felger spends several minutes scraping the ice off its windows. Then the small red car drives off, and Felger walks slowly back into the building. Sammy starts putting her gun away.

"Aunt Sam?" Cassie asks, fear and determination in her voice.

"It's okay, Cassie," Sammy says automatically. She tucks her gun away again and starts patting herself down until she finds her phone.

"Former host," Dani says, because while they can't tell Cassie everything, it isn't fair to leave her thinking there might be a _Goa'uld_ running around on Earth. "We didn't want her to see us." But oh, Dani wants to see Vala. Now that the immediate danger is past, and she has time to think, what she's thinking about is Vala. Vala, Abydos, the Gate Room, Vala giving Anubis the last component of the weapon that let him kill her family.

"Cam?" Sam says brightly. "Yeah. Remember that plumbing problem of ours? I think I've located the leak."

#

Cam has a secure line. Cam can call the SGC. Cam can set wheels into motion. The three of them loiter as inconspicuously as possible, sneaking randomly-timed peeks, until they see Felger come out (about ten minutes later) and drive off.

"Okay," Sammy says to Cassie. "Now _go home_. I'll be there in a couple of hours. Or I'll call."

"But--" Cassie says.

_"Business,"_ Sammy says firmly. "Don't worry about us. We'll be fine."

"God _damn_ it," Cassie says furiously, and she sounds as if she's trying not to cry.

"I know," Sammy says. "I'm sorry." She kisses Cassie on the forehead. Dani kisses her on the cheek. When Cassie came from Hanka, she was shorter than Dani. She's taller now. The passage of time. And at least they've lived to reach this day. (Some of them.)

"Be good," she tells Cassie, and manages to elicit a rude snicker.

They wait until they see Cassie drive away. Felger is on his way to the SGC, in response (Dani knows) to some vague-yet-urgent emergency summons. They'll know the right questions to ask him this time. And they'll just pray he hasn't been _za'tarc'd_ , but if he is, it's just one more proof of how thoroughly he's been compromised, and she hates the fact she's been taught so thoroughly to think that way she can no longer remember being someone else.

She and Sammy amble, with forced casualness, across the parking lot to Felger's building. Up the stairs, along the arcade, to his door. His locks suck; it only takes Sammy a minute to get them inside.

"Jay?" Dani says. Playing for the gallery, because his place might be bugged, and somebody might be listening right now. (They could be watching, too, but the two of them are just a little stuck there.)

"I don't think he's here," Sammy says. Playing right back. And her voice is saying one thing, but face and body are saying another, as she reaches out and pats Dani on the arm. Saying _you were right_ and _you aren't crazy_ and _I'm sorry I doubted you even for a moment._

And Dani smiles back—acknowledgement, forgiveness—because how could Sammy _not_ have doubted her, when she'd even doubted herself? "Huh," she says (still playing). "Well, _I'm_ on time." Implying a meeting, a rendezvous. "And I brought a present."

"Ha," the present says flatly, and they start their bug-sweep.

Felger's living room is a bachelor horror; cheap furniture, and most of the space is taken up by an enormous table-top covered with a grey rubber sheet marked with a grid and hundreds of small painted metal figures. Felger plays fantasy wargames—well, most of the geeks down on 18 play games of one sort or another, and apparently they have huge feuds over game-type, similar in fervor to the blood-drenched doctrinal battles that ripped the nations of Earth apart for so long. (And in fact continue to do so.) And if the geek-feuds don't actually lead to murder, they _do_ lead to spats of such heat that (as she recalls) General Hammond actually used to have to intervene occasionally. She knows Jay Felger and Bill Lee are obsessed with two different sorts of game, which causes them to stop speaking to each other (frequently) and communicate entirely through Chloe. She walks over to the table and inspects it carefully, touching nothing (habit of caution, even though nothing will be booby-trapped and Felger himself will not return to notice the evidence of their search). Everything is dusty. Felger hasn't touched his game for a long time. Probably since Vala arrived in his life. She thinks back to the first time she saw Vala (it was no hallucination, Vala really _was_ there in downtown Colorado Springs). She thinks about Vala being on Earth. Knowing where Earth _is_. And oh, she's known the _Goa'uld_ ( _Anubis_ ) have known where Earth is for a long time, have recovered the information Ra so carefully hid in order to hide his shame, but somehow this is different. It's unreasonable to think of Vala as some Angel of Death, a herald of planetary apocalypse, but the mind is not a reasonable place (she's living proof of that), and so she does.

She gets down on the floor _(ik)_ , rolls under the table, inspects the underside. Nothing. Checks the bottoms of the chairs (two from Felger's dinette set, four folding chairs, and this implies—doesn't it—companionship around this table, and what has he said to them?) while she's there. They're clean too. When she comes up, Sammy is shaking her head. Living room's clean.

"I don't know about you," Dani says, "but I think Jay owes me a cup of coffee." Felger owes her a double Scotch and a six-week vacation, actually. She'll settle for his skin. Or _someone's_ skin, because it suddenly occurs to her it's SOP to report every single New Contact, and Felger's girlfriend would certainly count as that, and a Girlfriend would be checked out (though Dani doesn't know by who), and surely Vala couldn't pass a Security Check?

She hugs herself tightly. Of _course_ Vala could. Assuming Felger reported her, assuming the report was passed up the line, the NID would have been the ones to clear her. And they _all_ know how trustworthy the NID's been lately.

Sammy looks at her, worried. She waves dismissively. They'll talk about this later, when they're sure they're secure. She walks into the kitchen.

When you work for a top-secret government agency (military department), there are a long list of things you can and can't do. One of the things you can't do is simply open the Yellow Pages and hire any service you choose, from cleaners to caterers to taxi company, because all the ones you use have to be cleared by the government first. The SGC has a list of "Approved Vendors" twenty-five pages long, with a supporting memo (eight pages) discussing what services and vendors not on the Approved List SGC Personnel can engage. Dani can go to a non-Approved bakery, for example; she can't call a non-Approved taxi service. Her cleaning service, her landscapers, her snow-removal service (the last two inherited from Jack, and the thought of him is a sharp reflexive pain, but his ghost has been with her since the moment she and Sammy stepped through this door; the things she has done here are his gifts to her; a legacy of survival) are all on the Approved list. Felger could hire any of them as well.

He obviously hasn't.

The contrast between his kitchen and Cam's (because they're both tiny rental-unit kitchens, superficially similar) is shocking (and why should it shock her, why should she _care_ this much?) Felger's is cluttered, untidy, faintly not-quite- _clean_ (and Cam's schedule is her schedule—appalling—and besides that, he cooks, yet his kitchen is immaculate). There's a set of tacky storage jars (flour, sugar, coffee, tea, and who uses those, anyway?), a half-full wine-rack, a sink of dirty dishes. She wrinkles her nose at the not-exactly smells, wishing she had a pair of latex gloves with her. Her leather gloves won't give her the sensitivity she needs for this search, and the alternative is ... touching things.

(Jack always said squeamishness killed more people than enemy action.)

(Jack.)

She gets to work.

Habit keeps her (still) from touching anything where she'd leave evidence behind (fingerprints in dust, in grease). She picks up a dishtowel and uses it to open doors, drawers, the refrigerator. Felger doesn't drink beer, but the fridge is filled with cartons of take-out, Tupperware containers (labeled by his mother), soda, milk, juice, bottles of champagne. The freezer contains ice cream and more labeled packages. She looks mainly out of curiosity: it's unlikely a listening device would be resident in Felger's freezer. Kitchen's clear (probably). And she wants a shower.

Sammy comes in, making the _"euw"_ -face that makes Dani think Sammy's just done Felger's bathroom. "I hate Mountain Dew," Dani says conversationally (just in case). "And I can't find the coffee filters."

They head down the hall to Felger's bedroom together.

If Felger's had sex with Vala (which would serve Vala right) Dani doubts he's had it here. She resists the temptation to open the curtains and the window; the room is dark and faintly-musty, and her nose prickles with an incipient sneeze. Sammy (who's just cleared the bathroom of alien influence) regards her without sympathy.

Double bed (unmade), cheap all-of-a-kind bedroom set (and okay, her bedroom set matches, too, but it's _antique_ ), cheap identical bedside lamps and a picture over the bed because Felger apparently thinks there's some rule you put something over the head of the bed. The room is as genderlessly impersonal as a hotel room, a room Felger seems unwilling to put the stamp of his own personality on, and in that bright sudden instant, Dani pities him, a grown man (a genius) living within an interlocking web of draconian proscriptions, and it hardly matters whether they're real or illusory, imposed or self-assumed. They define and circumscribe his life, and because of them he's ... so much less than he could be.

And he's had the illusion of escape, and they're about to take it away.

She and Sammy work quickly, checking obvious places, then less-obvious places. No bugging devices, but they find the usual and obvious things, and one thing neither of them quite expects: an SG-1 patch. Illicit contraband, here outside the Mountain, and oh, so much trouble for Felger (because the official search of his apartment is yet to come). She glances at Sammy, eyebrows raised, and Sammy nods. Dani slips the patch into her pocket. She can smuggle it back into work later tonight.

The apartment's as cleared (in the technical sense) as they can manage. They sit on Felger's couch; Sammy has her gun ready to hand. Neither of them says anything. They didn't find anything; that doesn't mean there wasn't anything here to find.

About an hour later, Sammy's cellphone rings. She answers it— _Carter_ —looking cautious, then vindictively pleased. "See you then," she says. And she smiles when she closes her phone, so Dani knows it's good news, but she doesn't know what good news it is. That has to wait another forty minutes—she thinks of jail cells and captivity, and longs, with faint irritation, for the dinner-at-Cam's they were supposed to be eating right about now—until Cam comes walking in through Felger's unlocked front door, carrying a big boxy black suitcase. He sets it down and opens it and it's a machine inside and he flicks some switches and it lights up and there's a dentist-drill whine that cycles up past the threshold of audibility—she thinks of the subliminal sound from PJ2-445, the one that kept the people there alive and drove all of SG-1 _batshit crazy_ —and there's a brief flare of pain in the hinge of her jaw and Sammy clears her throat uncomfortably and Cam says, "We're clear."

"We've got to figure out some way to make those things smaller," Sammy says.

Cam laughs. "We're lucky you could make one at all," he says. He looks at her, and he's got the same look of relief on his face Sammy did: finding Vala means there's _proof_. "We got her, baby. Picked her up about two hours ago. She's up at the Mountain right now, lying her head off."

"What about...?" Dani asks, waving her hands because she has too many questions to articulate just one of them. What will they do with her, how will they keep her, is Felger a _za'tarc_ , what comes next? (And they have her, Vala's their prisoner, and Dani feels a dark and ugly need for revenge, and she doesn't want to feel it, doesn't want Cam to see it.)

He sighs. "Well, I'm guessing if he was programmed, even asking him about his girlfriend'd set him off. We tied him hand and foot to a bed in Secured Medical before we asked him anything and the T-man was right there. Dr. Brightman thinks he's probably okay."

Teal'c's as fast and as strong as a _za'tarc_ , she thinks. A human one, anyway. She nods. "So now we find out how she knew." They know the first half of that—Felger was in all of the Monday Morning Meetings; he had all the information that was leaked. At least he was present for it, but Jay Felger doesn't have an eidetic memory (if he did, he'd be better at _Goa'uld_ ) and he's too much of an SG-1 groupie to turn traitor.

"Just waiting for Agent Barrett and his team," Cam says. "Right now nobody trusts anybody much. So we're all going to be looking over each other's shoulders. That's why my man Teal'c's hitching a ride with them." Teal'c would have been at Cam's when Sammy's call came. Eventually Dani knows she'll find out all the details of who's been where when all afternoon.

"Well there isn't anything here," Sammy says comprehensively. "Including—as far as we could tell—listening devices."

"Good to know," Cam says easily. "Means we should be out of here pretty quick." He wanders over to look at Felger's tabletop army. Sam pulls out her cellphone again to call Cassie and give her an update. 

_And when will you be home, Aunt Sam? Oh, when the Goa'uld are defeated, Cassie. Maybe then._

#

Agent Barrett and his honor guard, Flores and Bishop, arrive about twenty minutes later (Teal'c arrives with them; a looming presence of disapproval). She, Cam, and Sammy are playing "I Spy" to pass the time, and Cam's cheating wildly. (Once Dani figured out he was using Felger's toy soldiers as inspiration, she reset her brain for Medieval Footsoldier Time and had better luck.) Sammy's threatening both of them with unspecified retribution. It got dark as they waited; they turned on Felger's living room lights as they waited—wearing gloves—it didn't matter any more if their presence in his apartment was visible and obvious. (She's told Cam Felger has to have reported Vala as a New Contact and so somebody has to have cleared Vala as somebody suitable for Felger to know, and it's something Cam's already thought of, and he can find out from Graham when the report left the SGC. That may help them—they're all hoping—to see if there's another leak somewhere they need to plug. Maybe Vala will even be cooperative and tell them.)

Agent Barrett smiles to see them (to see Sammy at least); Bishop and Flores look professionally blank. Sammy says she doesn't think there's anything here; Agent Barrett says they'll bring their equipment and "containment units" up from the van; Cam volunteers their help. The NID has come in an unmarked box-van that might as well say "Secret Surveillance Unit" on the side. There are about a dozen suitcases to take upstairs; some of them light (probably the "containment units'), some of them heavy. The six of them get some curious looks (as they come in and out of Felger's apartment); it's the Saturday after Thanksgiving; the complex's tenants are returning from a long day of hunting and gathering. Cam announces cheerfully that Dr. Felger has won a free home movie theater and they're here to hook it up. (The story probably won't fool anyone, but it's better than the truth.)

Bishop and Flores do a quick search of Felger's place (hands and eyes and electronic widgets) while Agent Barrett asks Sammy what they can expect from "Valerie Doran's" apartment. Sam thinks it over, flicking her eyes toward Dani to bring her in on the conversation. "We know she's passing the information she gets from Dr. Felger to Ba'al," Sammy begins.

"Which makes so much sense, considering she's a former host," Dani points out. She's trying to stay calm, to keep the anger she feels out of her voice and off her face. It's hard, but the NID won't understand it. Even if they did, they'd only see it as a sign of weakness.

"Do you know that for certain, Dr. Jackson?" Agent Barrett asks.

"Both the "host" and the "former" part?" she asks. "Yeah, pretty much. We should really cut her open to check, though," she adds, and Cam frowns at her. She sighs. "She has _naquaadah_ in her blood, Agent Barrett. While we've seen _Goa'uld_ impersonate both humans and Jaffa, most of Vala's behavior is consistent with that of a freed host."

Sammy nods, agreeing with her assessment. "She's operating secretly here on Earth, and we think Dr. Felger's been inside her apartment. If so, there won't be anything immediately visible that would..."

"Draw attention to the fact she isn't from around here?" Agent Barrett suggests, and Sammy smiles. "Good thing we've got her keys, then." He holds up a keyring. It glitters and jingles. Of course. If they have Vala, they have all her possessions.

"Don't suppose the key to her spaceship is on there?" Cam asks hopefully.

Agent Barrett shakes his head, frowning. "Spaceship, Colonel Mitchell?"

" _Ha'tak, tel'tak_ , magic surfboard ... stands to reason she'd have her own way out of here in case of trouble. From what I saw, not the kind of girl who'd want to have to depend on somebody else—or wait around for 'em, either."

"We can scan for a ship," Sammy says, sounding excited now. "It has to be using some sort of cloaking technology. That gives off a known traceable energy signature."

"Where's _Odyssey_?" Dani asks. 

Because _Daedalus_ spends all its time going back and forth to Pegasus, and it's currently there and not here, and _Prometheus_ is dead, dead and gone, and they were supposed to be getting a new 303, but after the foul-up at the Gamma Site (not their fault from first to last) there were a number of back-room deals and the _Apollo_ was named the _Korolev_ instead, going to the Russians in part-payment of technology owed (pissing off the Chinese) and allowing the SGC to keep what's (when all is said and done) their own Stargate: the original Giza Gate, turned into a bomb four years ago (now), accidentally dumped on the ocean floor, salvaged by the Russians (and no Former East Bloc gratitude for saving their ass from the Replicators—not that Dani expects any—or for saving them from their own stupidity when they tried to set up their own Stargate Program with the salvaged—looted—Gate). The SGC had to lease it back when their own Gate was stolen by the NID—though the NID virtuously says it was the Trust (that so-convenient rogue operation the NID blames every time it gets caught with its hand in the jam-jar)—and now bought back once and for all by the US Government at the cost of the 303 it could have used to scan for Vala's hidden ship. She doubts the Russians would loan theirs. Doubts the right scanning technology is installed. Doubts the SGC/NID/Whoever would share the details of their little problem. They're barely admitting to the IOA how comprehensively they're losing their war against Anubis.

"We can check," Cam says.

"Is the tango's apartment likely to be booby-trapped?" Agent Barrett asks, and even while Dani is mentally translating ("tango" is "terrorist" is "Vala") Sammy is saying, "We can check," and Dani shakes her head.

"No," she says. "That would give too much away." Because she's sure Vala's had Felger in her apartment, and Felger spends his days working with _Goa'uld_ and other offworld technology.

She's worked with Agent Barrett before, and he's nice (for a government thug answerable to nobody) and he helped them clear Jack when the last shadow-group inside the NID decided to use him as the official face of the Kinsey Assassination. It doesn't mean she trusts him, or that _he_ understands _them_. Agent Barrett has never stepped through the Stargate, confronted the _Goa'uld_ on their home turf. Hasn't seen them when they aren't playing at being humans, but playing at being gods. They began that masquerade long before the dawn of human history; it's no longer a lie they tell others, Dani thinks, but a lie they tell themselves. Agent Barrett only saw the resurrected ghost of Sekmet briefly, without her robes, her court, her courtiers. All he saw was a mad murderous girl. Dani pitied Anna, but she saw the truth as well: arrogance and megalomaniac insanity and evil. Vala may not be a _Goa'uld_ , but she serves their purposes. Worse, far worse ( _depraved_ , she thinks, in a quiet corner of her mind) that a former host should do so.

Barrett and his team pay little attention to her assessment, more attention to Sammy's, and they've brought devices that can scan for the usual spectrum of energy readings. They leave Felger's lightly be-shambled apartment (Agent Barrett has told them a larger team is on the way; none of them bothers to ask if they're people he-or-they can trust; larger turf-wars loom on the horizon) and head off to the one Vala's made her base. It's on the ground floor. Easier to escape from, Dani supposes (or perhaps it was all that was vacant when Vala decided to take up residence close to her prey). Flores and Bishop and Teal'c stand guard to keep gawkers at bay; she and Sam and Agent Barrett and Cam cluster suspiciously in front of Vala's door.

No energy readings, no chemical signatures. Agent Barrett unlocks the door. The four of them enter the apartment as cautiously as (the three of them) have ever entered a _Goa'uld_ stronghold. They're all wearing latex gloves now; a fingerprint team will be here as soon as one can arrive from Washington. When Sammy (standing in the middle of the pitch-dark living room, illuminated only by Cam and Agent Barrett's flashlights) pronounces the apartment clear of potential ( _naquaadah_ -infested) dangers, Dani switches on a light. Cam clears his throat in an "I'm not saying anything," way.

"Wow," Sammy says weakly. 

Dani's been called "oblivious" all her life. More often since she came to the SGC (there's a joke buried somewhere in that, since her work for the SGC involves seeing so many things nobody else notices at all), but it's true she concentrates on the important things, and she's discovered (over the years) her definition of "important" and other peoples' doesn't seem to match. They blind themselves with trivia and then call _her_ "oblivious", but at least she notices enough to notice, even though she doesn't have any interest in stuffing her mind with the minutia that would allow her to communicate with the majority of the human race (like water, lying) on its own level. In that, she's come to realize, she's exceptional: most of the genius-mutants and narrow-focus polymaths who clutter the corridors of the SGC are incapable of noticing their own peculiar insensibility. She's certain Felger's been in this room. She's equally-certain Felger saw nothing odd about it.

"I'm kind of wondering where the money came from," Agent Barrett says at last.

The living room is crowded, its contents expensive. Too expensive for their setting, nor do the pieces seem to belong together. Dani can number on the fingers of one hand the times she's bought furniture (bookcases don't count), but both Sam and (shamefully) Teal'c derive a great deal of entertainment from furnishing imaginary homes, and Dani knows carpets. The _Qālii_ spread over the floor the floor is wool, hand-made, hand-dyed, Persian (Isfahan), and costs far more than a year's lease on this unit. The couch is modern, leather, massive, surrounded by a clutter of tables in rare wood and semi-precious stone and modern chrome and glass. All are strewn with ornaments. There are tall floor lamps of brass and wood and chrome, short table lamps of expensive glass. Shelves along the walls that hold, not books, but more ornaments, and the wall-space not encumbered by books is filled with other ornaments. Masks and plaques and even artwork. The overall effect is somehow both opulent and unsettlingly _incorrect_.

On one wall there's an enormous flatscreen television, its black blank surface the only dark unornamented thing here. Cam walks over to it, turning it on, quickly determining that yes, in fact it _is_ an ordinary television.

They search the room quickly and carefully, none of them knowing what they're looking for, but all of them certain they'll know it when they find it. There's nothing in the living room but candy and gold coins, some American currency stuffed into a drawer, a necklace dropped casually into a vase, and Dani's been in messy houses before, but there's something odd about this litter, and after a moment she realizes what it is. "No paper," she says. (Aside from the money.)

"Not a single receipt," Agent Barrett agrees grimly.

"Or the instructions for that big-ass television," Cam says (sounding more cheerful, Dani thinks, than the situation warrants), "and you _know_ something like that takes instructions to hook up right."

"Do you really think there's anything in the kitchen?" Agent Barrett asks. Dani's inspecting the collection of incredibly-expensive _junk_ on the shelves. To what purpose, to what end, the delicate, useless, ornamental objects of silver and crystal and hand-blown glass? Did Vala mean to take them with her when she left? Are they objects presented to her by Felger? What? She hears Sammy snort rudely. "Frankly?" Sammy asks dismissively, and Cam says: "Yeah."

They move on to the likelier hunting ground. The bedroom is at least ... more integrated. "I didn't know beds came in round," she says slowly.

"Pink satin sheets," Cam says. "I saw something like this in a magazine once. It wasn't mine," he adds hastily, when Sammy looks at him, eyebrows raised. Playing the clown to defuse the tension—not of the current situation, since the apartment isn't dangerous, but of the reality there's a _Goa'uld_ spy (finding proof is somehow worse than thinking she's gone crazy) and now they have to find out how she's gotten Felger to turn traitor. They find their answer quickly. Vala hasn't bothered to hide her tools. Why should she?

It explains so much.

The small black box looks as if it should contain jewelry. Instead it contains two small gold buttons and their activator wand. The _Tok'ra_ memory-recall device. Only, of course, it's not just _Tok'ra_ , because the _Tok'ra_ , in their way, are more incapable of invention than their genetic brothers. The device, the original technology, is _Goa'uld_.

"That explains that," Sammy says sourly, closing the box holding the memory-recall device. There are other items in the bottom drawer of the night table, too, all of them wrapped in a large silk scarf (as if they're sex toys, Dani thinks but doesn't say). A ribbon-device. A healing device. A communicator ball (disturbing to think of the chats Vala's been having with Ba'al, and maybe they can use it to prove she is, or to find out if she's reporting to one of his underlords instead, since _Goa'uld_ communication devices normally are pre-set to one specific frequency). A couple of crystals that are just, well, _crystals_ , but from long experience Dani's guessing they're probably keys to something that isn't here, since the _Goa'uld_ use crystals to store information.

Dani sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs her head. Isaine used the device on her weeks ago; she'd still had a lingering headache and the remains of a livid bruised burn on her temple when they'd come back from Tartarus.

"I'm sorry—what?" Agent Barrett says.

"This," Sammy says, flourishing the memory recall device. "I'll bet you good money Dr. Felger's got no idea he's our security leak. All Vala would have to do is hook him up to this, and ... I've never seen them used as a set, but I'm pretty sure, based on what the Galarans did with the same technology, Vala would be able to, well, _remember_ everything Dr. Felger saw and experienced."

"Oh, that's just wrong," Cam says quietly.

"Not hurting him," Dani says reluctantly, reasoning it out. "There weren't any gaps in his memory; he would have noticed. And she'd have cleaned up any marks with the healing device. So there wouldn't have been any traces for us to find." Agent Barrett doesn't look convinced, but Dani knows she's right.

"So somebody can just walk in and stick these on your head and ... think what you're thinking?" Agent Barrett asks, walking around the bed and reaching for the box Sammy's holding.

Dani gets to her feet and takes the box from Sammy, deftly (and with pretend-obliviousness) keeping it out of Agent Barrett's hands.

"More in the nature of remembering the same things you remember," Sammy answers. "And I'm not quite sure a human could actually make this technology work. We know Vala's a former host."

"They worked on you. And—apparently—on him," Agent Barrett says, turning his attention to the other items.

"A lot of _Goa'uld_ technology does," Sammy answers grimly. "That doesn't mean we can make it work." She holds up the ribbon device. It looks like a piece of jewelry, a silly impractical piece of thin golden metal and large red glass jewels. Unreal. But it's real enough to burn, to kill—they aren't really sure of all the things it can do, because the ribbon device isn't really a single-function machine (like a gun) but rather an object that focuses the intent of its wearer. Dani's seen them burn, kill, fling someone across a room with bruising force ... or simply lull their victim into dazed unconsciousness, not even leaving a mark. "We'll need to interrogate Felger. We'll need to interrogate Vala, too." Sammy sighs.

"Good thing I turned off the oven," Cam says.

Beyond the cache of _Goa'uld_ toys, they don't find anything of interest to either the SGC or the NID—or not exactly. There's enough cash (in a duffel bag in the back of the closet) and enough random pieces of expensive jewelry to suggest Vala might have been entertaining herself committing burglary, but they know (if the NID doesn't) how little value Earth's treasures have beyond the Gate. Gold, platinum, diamonds ... nearly worthless in a _Goa'uld_ -run galaxy. The standard of value is _naquaadah_. 

At least it was before Anubis.

It all keeps coming back to Anubis.

Almost six hours after Dani impulsively asked Cassie to pull over (acting on one of the many random impulses that govern her life) they're ready to leave. Not home, not even to their long-delayed dinner, but off to the SGC (and she wishes so desperately General Hammond was still in command, because General Hammond always put people first, and his command before politics, and they'll need to protect Felger from the NID, and they'll need to keep their hands on Vala, because the NID is riddled with rot and corruption, and Dani knows Vala will be able to convince the NID to let her go). The agents put official tape and official stickers over both apartment doors, proclaiming that interesting disasters have taken place within. The official teams will be here in a few hours to take hopeful fingerprints and scour both places thoroughly, perhaps (maybe) with SGC oversight. 

She hands over the memory devices (reluctantly, at the last possible moment) and Flores locks them into one of her suitcases. "Containment units." As if the potential for misuse those tiny gold buttons represent can be so easily contained. By unspoken agreement the four of them wait until the van has driven away before heading toward Cam's car.

"I'm hungry," he says plaintively, as he climbs into the driver's seat.

"We didn't get dinner," Dani points out from the back. Sammy (sitting beside her, because there's no way in hell Teal'c is going to fit into the back seat of _anything_ ) looks at her watch and sighs. The Commissary's going to be shutting up shop just about now; there will be a few sandwiches left out (lunch leftovers), but not only are they dry and heading for stale, they'll go fairly fast.

"Yeah, and we aren't going to, either," Cam says. "Might as well settle for a junk food fix. Better'n starvation."

So on their way to the Mountain they swing through a McDonald's drive-through and purchase not only their own (long-delayed) dinners, but enough additional burgers and fries and cookies and pies and very nearly one of every thing on the menu to feed half the SGC. Because Cam says the agents probably didn't get their dinners either, and he's not sure anybody fed Felger and he's pretty sure even enemy aliens like McDonald's.

"You can't be intending to _feed_ her," Dani says, her voice flat with surprise. She's surrounded by bags, and juggling bags (they're all over the back seat and in the footwell) and Cam is pulling out of the drive-through.

"Baby, we want her to talk to us," Cam says quietly. There's no reproach in his voice, but she feels it anyway. She'd like to be the woman he wants her to be—the one who doesn't want to _rip Vala's throat out_ right now. She can't be.

"I'm pretty sure french fries won't work," she says, breathing deeply to keep her voice even and emotionless. He accelerates into traffic and she concentrates on locating the bag containing the coffee.

They come through the last four checkpoints carrying bags and boxes of take-out largesse—Cam distributes cups of coffee to the SFs on post, making cheerful small-talk about wives and husbands and families and plans for Christmas. Good policy, Dani realizes along the way, with SG-1 coming in unscheduled at the beginning of the Swing Shift. He can't tell them what's going on, but he can loiter enough to show them it isn't the end of the world. A sudden sharp flare of pride—in him, what he's become with them (what he might have been all along, if she'd only been able to see it)—makes her throat ache. Graham's waiting for them at the last check-point (Graham's family is in Kansas, and oh, she remembers when Jack found out; there was every variation of _Wizard of Oz_ joke and one year Jack got Graham a coffee mug with the Ruby Slippers on it. She's sure he must still have it—his proudest possession—but she hasn't seen it for longer than she can remember. She wonders if Graham will be going home for Christmas this year. If any of them will be) to tell them General Landry is here and he's waiting for them with the NID Team in the Briefing Room and Cam says he brought dinner for Agent Barrett's team if the General doesn't mind and Graham says he'll make a call.

Graham lingers at the checkpoint while they head for the elevator to take them down to Changing Rooms on 14, and by the time she and Sammy come out again there are airmen waiting. Not because they're in trouble (that would mean SFs) but to carry the bags and boxes for them. Sgt. Alvarez tells Cam Major Graham said they were to bring the food to the Briefing Room, so that's where they (and it) go. Maybe General Landry is on drugs.

She doesn't really care a lot, actually, because he lets them spread out dinner on the table and actually eat it. He even accepts a cup of coffee (agreeing it's better than military-issue) and turns down a Quarter Pounder With Cheese. The rest of them eat, and brief him, and Dani and Sammy (the only ones here with personal experience of the technology) hammer home the salient point: Felger had no idea he was giving up any secrets and wouldn't have been able to withhold them even if he _had_ known. 

"My guess is she put him to sleep and then hooked him up," Dani says, waving a french fry for emphasis. She realizes what she's doing and sets it down hastily. She doesn't dare look toward the top of the table, but Agent Barrett looks amused. Fine. She'll take "amused" if it gets Felger off the hook.

"The way we've seen the technology work in the past is by either displaying the subject's memories on a monitor screen or by simply recalling them vividly without display," Sammy says. "There's no reason to think—especially given what we learned from the Galarans—two devices couldn't be linked."

The Galarans wanted to be able to clone memories, so they'd only have to train one man and then clone his knowledge, his experience, into a hundred others. The same thing the people did on Orban, without (in theory) the human cost. She doubts the nations of Earth would have used it for anything so benign; the Galarans even said it could be used to excise memories and implant created ones indistinguishable from reality. If...

"If the _Goa'uld_ device can be used to implant false memories in the same way we were told the Galaran one can," Dani says, "Vala may very well simply have ribboned Dr. Felger unconscious each Monday evening, used the memory device on him to extract what she wanted, implanted the memory of an, ah... romantic interlude... then used the healing device to remove all traces of any physical duress."

"Oh, very delicately put, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says sarcastically.

"So you're saying this guy's just a patsy?" Bishop says.

"'Innocent victim,'" Dani says under her breath, for Teal'c's benefit. He may not need the translation—probably doesn't—but it's half habit, half nervous tic by now.

"Dr. Felger could not have withstood the effect of _Goa'uld_ technology," Teal'c says in his most intimidating bass rumble. "Nor has he intentionally caused you harm. You are, I believe, fortunate to have possessed his involvement in this matter."

"Oh, come on," Flores says, making a face. She glances sideways at Agent Barrett, but she doesn't apologize.

"No, no, Teal'c's right," Cam says. "Nothing about this makes anybody happy—begging your pardon, sir—but if Vala hadn't picked Dr. Felger as her target, we might still not know where our leak was."

Agent Barrett sighs. "Yeah, maybe now we can finally put this whole spy-ring to bed. If the lady's willing to talk to us."

General Landry looks pleased with himself; Dani knows that means somebody's about to get it in the neck. "The President thinks—in light of our current situation—the best place to secure the prisoner is at Area 51. He asked me to assure you that despite the fact she'll remain in military custody for the immediate future, the NID will be allowed full access to her. In line with appropriate security procedures, of course."

Bishop and Flores look abruptly blank; Agent Barrett looks grim. "I'll have to notify my superiors, General Landry."

"You do that, son." Landry sounds smug, and why shouldn't he? The Air Force is ahead on points.

"Do you know when she's being moved, sir?" Cam asks. "Kinda like the chance for a few words with her before she goes."

"She'll be our guest for a little while yet, Colonel; feel free," General Landry says with his usual lead-pipe graciousness, getting to his feet (it's worlds better than active obstructionism, and Dani's not quite sure why he's gone from one to the other). "Dismissed."

They all go up to 16. Sammy and Teal'c (and Agent Bishop) go to talk to Felger, to find out as much as they can about his history with Vala (dates, times, places). She and Cam and Agent Barrett go off to talk to Vala. Agent Flores (presumably) is talking to Washington, trying to get the playing field shifted in the NID's favor. At least General Hammond is at Homeworld. Life has become a game of chess, and the game would be so much simpler if the pieces couldn't move themselves while her back is turned.

Agent Barrett isn't terribly pleased with the SGC just at the moment, and for some reason Cam is dawdling; Agent Barrett and the two SFs end up several yards ahead. They're coming up on a cross-corridor; Cam takes her arm and walks her down it, pulling out his passcard.

"Hey," she says quietly. He swipes open the lock, opens the door, walks her inside. She'd balk except for the fact he's coming inside with her; it's one of the holding cells.

"A word," he says, and his face is serious.

"Come _on_ , Cam," she says, turning toward the door, because every minute they're here is another minute Barrett is alone with Vala, and she isn't worried about what Vala's going to tell Barrett, she's worried about what Barrett's going to give up to Vala without knowing he is.

"Dani," Cam says, and she stops, turning back, instinct pulling her in two directions at once, because _(eighteen months now since he walked into her life, into all their lives)_ , she's learned to trust him and his reading of a situation, but she doesn't think she's going to like whatever she's about to hear.

"Look," he says. "Believe me, I know what Vala's responsible for. I know what you're feeling, and I promise you—nobody's going to let her walk away from any of this. But when we get down there, you've got to let me play things my way. Dial it back, okay?"

"I'm pretty sure you don't know what I'm feeling," she says, and she hates the sound of her own voice, and the fact she can't keep from saying the words. "And since you obviously think I'm a _complete idiot_ , maybe you'd better spell out this great plan of yours in really small words."

He blows out a breath, and the sound his harsh and loud in the silence of the small room. He rubs the back of his neck, staring at the floor. "You light into her the way you want to and we lose any chance of her talking to us. Let's try a little sugar and see where it gets us."

Oh, god, has he gone crazy? Has he forgotten _Prometheus_ , where Vala stole the ship and beat her unconscious? Forgotten 841, where she used a shock grenade on all of them before kidnapping her _again_? Vala said she wanted to keep the Eye of Ra out of Anubis' hands, but if she'd only _told them what she wanted_ in the first place, they could have gone to Abydos, gotten the Eye, left hours before he arrived. Anubis would have left Abydos intact if he hadn't found what he was looking for. Dani's certain of it.

"It won't work," she says flatly.

"Yeah, well, it's got an outside shot," Cam says (head still down, not looking at her), and he doesn't sound angry so much as _brisk_ (storm-front edge of vanishing idiolect, and she ignores it). "And at the very least it's going to make us look a little more professional in front of company than you threatening to _kill_ her. And since we both know nobody's going to let you do that, we're going to play this my way."

"And if I don't?" she asks evenly, knowing she's gone out the other side, from hot anger to cold, and she knows Cam can sense it too. He raises his head and locks eyes with her.

"Then I figure you're going to stay here. And I'm going to go talk to Vala by myself."

There's no apology in his expression, though there's sympathy. And she knows he'd do it—lock her in here, do what he had to, come back and let her out. He'd make an excuse to Agent Barrett of course, to save her pride. And nobody would ever have to know what he'd done.

But she'd know. And he'd know.

She's closer to the door than he is. She could probably get through it before he could stop her. All that would do would be to make this public: he wouldn't balk (she knows; she knows _him_ ) at having the SFs on Vala's door bring her back here at gunpoint if he thought he had to. For the mission, because the mission trumps everything and always has.

"This time," she says, her voice a whisper.

He nods. "All I'm asking. Let's go."

He looks away, swipes them out through the door again. She follows him down the corridor.

Dani remembers how appalled she was (a lifetime ago) to discover Level 16 held interrogation chambers as well as all of their internal surveillance and the SFs station. Who (she'd wondered then) were they going to be interrogating, considering the fact the SGC's mandate didn't run one foot beyond Level One and even if they _did_ manage to drag some _Goa'uld_ back to Earth, they'd have to turn it over to somebody else. The whole idea of anybody, anywhere in the entire United States Government, doing anything falling under the heading of "interrogation" had made her faintly queasy: _interrogation_ was something done by fascist dictatorships and alien monsters.

It's not true and it never was (and Jack knew it, and kept the information from her as long as he could—preserving what innocence she had left—but that wasn't very long at all when they were all fighting to keep Teal'c alive and at the SGC) and she's spent a lot of time in these rooms over the years, as subject and as interrogator, and she can't even name the day, the month (the year) she became _all right_ with this. When she looks back and tries (some day) to try to reassemble the pieces of the Dani she used to be, this is one of the places she'll look: the point at which interrogation became just another tool of her trade.

When she and Cam walk in (Cam stops just as one of the SFs swings the door open, and she checks, veering wide around him, anger pressing her against the floor like alien gravity, making her muscles ache, then walking in ahead of him) Agent Barrett is already there, and so is Vala. Each on opposite sides of the table, both seated, and Vala is holding her wrists in front of her chest—a false, artificial pose—to display the bright chains of her handcuffs and shackles. She's wearing a green Air Force jumpsuit, and her hair is loose.

There are only three chairs at the table. Cam takes the empty one beside Agent Barrett. Dani goes to lean against the wall, beneath the observation mirrors. They'll still be able to see her (because cameras cover the room from every angle, and all the monitors feed into the room above), but the position makes her feel less exposed.

Vala looks toward Cam. There's no recognition on her face. "I'm innocent," she says, in the hopeless desperate tones of someone repeating something yet again. "I don't know who you think I am. There's a mistake. I know there is. I'm Valerie Doran. Jay knows me!"

"I'm sorry," Cam says, and he sounds as if he really is. "We know who you are. Colonel Carter picked up the _naquaadah_ in your blood. Dr. Jackson recognized you. And we've already searched your apartment."

"Ah, well," Vala says dropping the act abruptly. "Worth a try." She smiles, bright and unrepentant.

"If you cooperate with us, Ms., um, Mal Doran, I can promise you won't be harmed," Agent Barrett says.

Vala tosses her head. "Everybody knows about the _Tau'ri_ ," she says scornfully.

The _Tau'ri_ (apparently) are a galactic byword for their unwillingness to employ the techniques the rest of the universe considers Business As Usual: Vala's already certain they won't torture her. Dani shifts position restlessly. Held at Area 51, General Landry said, and there's enough _Goa'uld_ torture equipment housed there to make Vala's life short and unpleasant, if nothing else. Cam said (implied, at least) he had a plan. Dani keeps silent.

"Hey," Cam says, as if the idea's just struck him. "You hungry? I bet you didn't get dinner, and I figure we could rustle you up a little something. Nothing fancy, but at least it's here."

Vala beams at him (Dani focuses on a place several feet beyond the end of the table, counting her own breaths). "Oh, thank heavens somebody's being _civilized_! You know, the only truly worthwhile thing about your backwater planet is _chocolate_! Oh, and coffee—you know, I could actually make your people quite rich, you know."

Cam smiles back at Vala and asks one of the SFs to bring dinner for their guest. He says there's a stash of chocolate in the top right-hand drawer of his desk, and if they'd bring that along too, he'd be obliged. "I guess you know we probably aren't going to go for a deal like that," he says, when the SF has departed. Two inside the door, two outside; one of the outside guards moves inside, and she's sure another one has been summoned to stand watch outside the door as well. They aren't taking any chances.

"You should," Vala says seriously.

"I think we have more important things to think about right now," Agent Barrett says. "Tell us which _Goa'uld_ you're working for." Most people can't manage the tripthong in _"Goa'uld"_ —just as they can't manage the inhaled click at the end of Teal'c's name, expressing it (usually) as a hard "k" sound. Agent Barrett, as usual, pronounces _Goa'uld_ as "Gold" (one flat monosyllable); she's long-since given up flinching. Vala looks faintly superior.

"I consider myself a free agent," she says loftily.

"But you have contacts," Agent Barrett says, and Dani already knows this interrogation is going wrong, because Vala has to have had—have been—far more than that. She knew about the Eye of Ra. She knew Anubis was going to Kelowna. She knew about _naquadriaah_. No "free agent" could have known any of those things, only a member of a _Goa'uld_ court. And Felger's information has been going to Ba'al, and Ba'al (bold, free-thinking, and possibly suicidal) has had one spy network shut down by Anubis and that hasn't even slowed him down. She wonders if Agent Barrett doesn't read their reports (her mission analyses), can't interpret them, or (cheery thought) has never seen them at all because her reports have been rewritten into nonsense before they reach him.

"Oh, Malcolm—I have something _you_ want, and you have something _I_ want. Don't you think we can be friends? I'm really very easy to get along with."

The wall is hard against her back. It's grey concrete. Everything down here is grey concrete, unless it's been covered with cheap wood paneling. Or painted. Sometimes they paint things, but not often, because they're a mile underground and paint fumes have to go somewhere. Every square foot of air they breathe (if you measure air in square feet) has been scrubbed and laundered and enriched and detoxified before it reaches them, recirculating forever as if they're on an airplane or a submarine. The only time they get new air is when it comes in on the elevator or through the Stargate. Or when they actually open all the hatches between here and the surface on a Code Red drill. Dani concentrates on the hardness and the coldness, and wishes she could become her surroundings. Concrete doesn't feel.

"We'll be grateful for your cooperation, ma'am," Agent Barrett says, and when Vala leans across the table (the chains sparkle) Dani realizes she's managed to work the zippered front of her jumpsuit open halfway to her waist. 

"All I really want is to go back to my life," she says throatily. "I hope you'll help me. I would be ... very grateful."

The food shows up before Dani gets to find out whether Vala's "gratitude" involves a _ménage a trios_ on the interrogation room table.

She starts with the chocolate (they're the Godiva bars Cam always leaves on Dani's desk, and Dani makes a private vow to throw out all future such offerings untouched) and Cam says (still easy, still smiling) he always makes it a habit to eat dessert first too. Vala complains the coffee is cold (it probably isn't), that she hates McDonald's (you'll eat anything if you're hungry enough), that she doesn't know a single thing of any use to them.

Agent Barrett lists the things she _does_ know, starting with the location of her personal ship (Vala, licking ketchup off her fingers, denies any such thing exists), to the details of the information she passed to her contact (Vala just smirks), to the name of her contact and the details of their association.

"You can't honestly think I'm going to tell either of you anything!" Vala says condescendingly. "You might as well let me go now."

"You know we won't," Cam says. He hasn't spoken in a while, letting Agent Barrett uselessly list their talking points. "We're going to lock you up. I don't think I'm telling you about anything you don't already know when I say it's going to be at Area 51. And sure, sure, I don't know your situation. But I know a little about the _Goa'uld_. When you stop reporting in, you think Ba'al might figure you've sold him out?"

Dani sees Vala's eyes flicker, and for the first time Vala looks uncertain.

"And okay," Cam goes on, just as if he hasn't noticed anything, "you know and I know Anubis was the big dog here, and I know, I know, we think he's dead, but we thought that before and we were wrong. What if we're wrong again? What if Ba'al already _knows_ we're wrong? You disappearing'd all make sense to him."

"Anubis is dead," Vala says flatly.

"Yeah," Cam says. "But there's just one other thing too. You remember Dr. Jackson? I'm thinking sooner or later she and Teal'c are going to want to get around to asking you what you meant to do with the Eye of Ra."

His voice is quiet, and calm, and almost apologetic, so it actually takes Dani longer than it takes Vala to realize what Cam has just _said_.

"You wouldn't let her," Vala says slowly, sounding shocked.

"She wouldn't ask my permission," Cam says.

"I saved your _life_!" Vala says (speaking directly to her for the first time). Her tone is halfway between pleading and annoyed.

Dani doesn't realize she's moved at all until the impact of the wall against her back jars her back to awareness. She realizes Cam's standing in front of her, his hands on her shoulders.

Abydos. Kelowna. Two planets gone and millions dead, her family slain.

She looks up, but there's no anger in Cam's face, in Cam's hands. Played Vala and played her, and she's angry enough at all of this to kill, but she's in control now. She nods, and he steps back.

"I'm just saying if you tell us what you know, at the very least we'll use it to take out Ba'al," Cam says, turning back to Vala as if the interlude hasn't happened. "Could be once we're sure he doesn't have any other agents on Earth we'd be persuaded to hand you over to the NID. Can't promise anything, though."

Vala takes a deep breath and gets to her feet. "I'm so sorry I can't be of any help. But you see, I really don't know anything at all." She smiles brightly. False, like everything about her. False.

Agent Barrett (courteous, frustrated, baffled) gets to his feet as well. Cam shrugs, and sighs, and tells the SFs to take Vala back to her cell.

"Great act, you two," Agent Barrett says, looking from Cam to her. And she looks down and away, and nods because she doesn't want to admit the truth in any way: it wasn't an act. Any of it.

Agent Barrett is asking Cam something, and she's sure she ought to pay attention, participate, contribute to the discussion, but she can't. She walks to the door of the interrogation room (unlocked now) and yanks it open.

She doesn't know where the hell she's going—it suddenly occurs to her she doesn't even have a way home from here, because they were out in Sammy's car and Cam ran them up here and her Jeep is at her house and if none of this had happened she'd probably have spent tonight on Cam's couch even though it's Saturday not Friday and he'd have run her home in the morning after breakfast and she never intends to do that again which means she's never going to sleep again and oh dear god _the Mountain is no place for this kind of fight._

And suddenly her destination is easy—a network of elevators and stairways and access ladders she could follow _in her sleep_ —and she's out on the surface: the SGC's "back door", and it would be a lot more of a security breach if the door didn't have a card-scanner and if the last six flights weren't one long ladder up a shaft that's comfy for her but claustrophobic for Teal'c.

The "back door" brings you out almost a mile from the "front door", so it's far away from the security lights (secretly she suspects the back door is for people who need to enter the SGC unnoticed and leave the same way, but if her security clearance is astronomically high, it isn't high enough for her to know the answer for sure). Pitch dark because the day's still overcast (coming up on 2200 now, but she still wishes she hadn't eaten) and ice cold, but she's been coming out here for years and she can find her favorite sitting rock by instinct. It isn't any colder than the concrete a mile underground, and she knows she ought to be down there making sure Felger's going to be okay, and writing up her notes on Vala's interrogation (and throwing out _every single candy bar in her desk_ ) but she can't. Not right now.

Her teeth are chattering too hard for her to stop; she's shaking, and it's not with cold. It's the after-action adrenaline rush, fight-or-flight with no place to go. It leaves her nauseated and spacey with a faint ringing in her ears, and she hates the fact it's familiar enough for her to know to just ride it out, to know what she'd have to do to surf and prolong it if she was in the field, to try to bring herself down as quickly as possible if she'd (if they'd) just come stumbling back through the Gate. Hot shower and a workout and another shower and everybody knows to cut the Teams a little slack when they come in hot (Janet always did, General Hammond always did) and how would any of that help her now when her problem isn't on the other side of the Gate, it's here? She doesn't want to think about what Cam knew, and what he did: saying he was willing to lock her up to keep her from getting in his way during the interrogation, but he'd never really meant it, because he'd wanted her there, meant to use her as his ultimate threat against Vala, knowing Vala knew the _Tau'ri_ didn't believe in torture.

They were more practical on Abydos. Ra taught them to be.

She keeps hoping she's learning to live with it (survive it) somehow, the way she reached a _modus vivendi_ after Sha're died (after she killed Sha're) and Skaara was taken. And she thought she was okay (she _had_ been okay, she tells herself) but the sight of Vala has undone all her painstaking self-repair. Vala and Anubis are inextricably linked in her mind, and she wants revenge, wants him stopped. Cam pretended for Vala's sake they think he's dead, but...

And she can't stop thinking about the indigestible thought of _What Cam Did_ , because she can't accept it, can't forgive it, and she would have done just the same. Has used him just as cruelly, in fact, when she had to, to save lives (to save his life). And he could survive it (forgive it) and she isn't sure she can, and she hates that too, and _this shouldn't be a contest_ , because if it is, she thinks she'll lose.

She's worked her way through from just sick to freezing cold and sick when she hears the door open again. She turns toward it reflexively, though of course there's no light. No sound of footsteps, either, though she holds still enough to hear the door close quietly, and can tell (from the amount of noise it makes) that whoever's here isn't trying to sneak. They're just quiet. And she'd thought Cam would come, but she knows from that, and from the fact there's no flashlight, it's Teal'c.

He can see her looking toward him (toward the accessway, anyway; she can't actually see anything) and when he's a few feet away she hears the soft "crump" of boots into pine needles; Teal'c deliberately making noise.

Even when you can't see, you can _sense_. She can tell he's standing beside her; she has the illusion of being able to feel the warmth of his body, but though even on tretonin Teal'c runs several degrees warmer than a human (and in his symbiote days, his normal body temperature was a lovely 106.8F), the illusion of warmth is probably actually the displacement of air currents. Even when the air seems completely still, it's moving.

"Colonel Mitchell feared you would be cold," he says quietly. She feels something brush her shoulder, and reaches for it automatically. Fabric. Her winter jacket (and the reason each team has its own gear-up room is that they need to keep uniforms and gear for every climate and season ready-to-wear, and there've been days she's damned near frozen to death on her way from the gear-up room to the Gate Room). She drags it on. The heavy fabric is cold; she wraps the Velcro closed and shoves her hands into the pockets.

"Thanks," she says. Her throat aches and her mouth is dry: cold and tension. She doesn't need to ask how Cam knew where she was; she carded out, and he's Senior Staff. If everyone couldn't be tracked, it wouldn't be much of a security system, now, would it? She wiggles her fingers in her pockets. They burn and ache with approaching warmth. "Felger?"

"Dr. Felger is distressed. Colonel Carter believes he will be absolved of having knowingly abetted our enemies. Colonel Mitchell shares this belief."

Teal'c _could_ have just come up here to deliver a jacket and stayed because she asked him a question, but he's got that "not going anywhere" _gravitas_ she can sense even in the dark. It's not that he's trying to make her feel guilty for not having been there: Teal'c has never _ever_ tried to make her feel guilty about anything—both of them understand guilt too well. Teal'c just goes straight for disapproval when he thinks she shouldn't be doing something (operating on an entirely different basis than guilt) and right now he isn't disapproving of her. "What about you?" she asks.

"It would be inappropriate to censure Dr. Felger for actions beyond his control," Teal'c says.

"God, I hope so," she says, sighing (she knows Teal'c hasn't given her a direct flat-out answer either, since her question wasn't really about his opinion—something she already knew implicitly—but what he thinks is going to happen, and they both know it).

Teal'c almost never touches anyone first, though Jaffa culture itself involves (a) significant amounts of touch-as-communication and (b) a personal space bubble much smaller than Americans have (but then, who _doesn't_ have a smaller personal space bubble?), but when she takes her hand out of her pocket and raises it to shoulder height (blindly, because she still can't see him) he takes her hand unbidden. His is warm, closing around her fingers as carefully and gently as if her hand were a delicate artifact. If he chose (she knows) he could snap her bones just by flexing his fingers; Jaffa are stronger than humans. It's not just the symbiote (though that's part of it) but something to do with the way the muscle tissue is put together. More to do with hormones than with the _Goa'uld's_ endless desire to breed (or engineer) a _hok'taur_ , because if it were that easy, they'd have done it a long time ago. And Cassie wouldn't be here, and SG-1 would never have had oh-so-many charming afternoons with Nirrti, and possibly Ra wouldn't have been overthrown in the first place. If Ra still ruled, she (one Danielle Jackson, PhD) would never have been born: the _Goa'uld_ practice a rough-and-ready form of genetic selection among their slave races, and she's a mass of recessives. Even if her father had been born precisely as he was, her mother would have been culled for defective eyesight. In the impossible event she hadn't been, her daughter's poorer eyesight and extensive allergies would have marked her for an early death.

She's babbling internally, her interior monologue the psychic equivalent of whistling past the graveyard—for values of "graveyard" including "things she doesn't want to face right now." Teal'c simply waits. In the first days, his silence disturbed her until she learned to hear it properly. Teal'c listens and waits and thinks. He will speak for information (questions and answers), more rarely as entertainment. Rarest of all, as comfort: there's little comfort to be had beneath _Goa'uld_ rule, and the attempt to proffer it (if discovered) is seen as weakness, as threat, as attack. Teal'c is not weak, nor would he attack those to whom he is loyal. And they are not _Goa'uld_ , but the lessons of a lifetime are not easily set aside. When Teal'c was born (uncountable thousands of light-years away), Victoria was still Queen-Empress of England.

She sets her teeth to keep them from chattering; Teal'c won't ask stupid pointless questions (like how she's feeling), but he'll certainly tell her to stop sitting on a rock at somewhere around 0C when he figures she's courted pneumonia long enough (the Jaffa understand illness, though you'd think they wouldn't: sickness kills those of their children who succumb below the age of implantation, one of the many ways the _Goa'uld_ have of ensuring a hardy slave-race). It's in her best interests to use her solitude well, because going back down into the Mountain means confronting the truth (dealing with it and living with it and admitting it exists). Truth: Cam used her and was willing to use her and knew how to use her, and the first two bother her far less than the third and all its ramifications (she's always been a tool, but nearly always her own).

Cam ordered her to silence, and he would have locked her up if she hadn't promised to obey (and she's refused to obey generals and presidents, kings and self-styled gods), but he'd never _expected_ her to obey. Not forever. Just for just long enough. That was what he was after, and he got it, and ... that's what bothers her. That he knows her that well; if he knows that much, what else does he know, and what will he do with it? Anything he feels is right, and that's the problem, because she trusts Cam (she _does_ ), but tonight she's gotten real and absolute proof _she can't win_. If he managed to blindside her so shamefully and utterly on such short notice, can she ever be sure of being able to outthink him in the field? (Or anywhere else, and oh, that's the real problem, isn't it, because in the field he takes her advice or he tells her what to do—in no uncertain terms—and there's not much hidden agenda there. Most of the time.)

It may be petty to say she wants her own way more than she wants to be happy, but she always has. And more than either one (she suspects) she wants to keep her secrets. And she doesn't think she has many left.

She thinks she understands (just a little) how the Jaffa must feel, owning nothing but their own thoughts. Her scholarship is a communal possession; all she knows is known by others. She didn't have personal possessions (home and hearth and all the objects so many people take for granted) until so late in her life that even now the things she owns never seem quite as if they're hers, though technically most of them have been in her possession all her life. The only things that are really hers are her memories, her history, and her secrets, and of the three, her memories have been edited and destroyed in the line of duty and her history has been pillaged by her employers. Her secrets—those she retains—are her only unique possession, so she needs to decide if she can either share them, or live without them. 

Sammy asked her this afternoon what she wanted for Christmas, because it's less than a month away.

_My life back._

Or _a_ life, considering many people would say she's never had one.

She squeezes Teal'c's hand and closes her eyes tightly. She can't even tell herself Cam will never hurt her with what he knows. He already has. And he'll do worse if he thinks he has to, and so will she. She already has. (Jack gave the order to blow up the Gadmeer ship when he thought she was aboard and the fate of the galaxy didn't even lie in the balance; a few months later he shot Sammy dead with a zat, and it was only by accident she survived. Three years later Dani insisted they go on the mission that killed him, and round and round and round they go.)

It comes down to trust (then, now, always). Does she trust Cam to make whatever he's going to do to her _count_? Because she'll hate it and it might break her and it might even kill her. But will it _count_ in the only reckoning she's learned to value: victory for them, defeat for their enemy?

"Oh, god," she says, and she means to laugh but it sounds (even to her) more like a wail. "We'll probably all be dead by Christmas anyway."

He'll make it count.

"Indeed we will not be," Teal'c says firmly (sounding, at last, disapproving). "But I believe it is time for us to seek shelter, Danielle Jackson."

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um... none? Wow.


	14. NOVEMBER 2006—DECEMBER 2006

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani goes to Washington, Cam and Vala go to Area 51.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings in endnotes.

Cam had other plans for this evening. They'd involved pot-roast (hadn't been quite enough leftover turkey to make potpies, and Sam would've chucked that menu in his face anyway, turkey so soon after Thanksgiving) and stuffed baked potatoes and the chocolate cake that's Little Miss's particular favorite, because he's sure to a reasonable degree of certainty the cake would be enough of a drawing card to keep her tailbone on the couch all the way through a discussion of Christmas, because Momma expects Dani for Christmas, meaning he'd better not show up without her. And he really wants to go home for Christmas (always assuming he's got leave—which he won't know until next week, when December's duty roster is posted—and he happens to be on _Earth_ ).

He knows her well enough to know she doesn't approve of meeting strangers (outside the line of duty), meeting peoples' relatives, parties, Christmas, and wasting time (in pretty much that order, and probably with a side-order of meeting _his_ relatives thrown in). Before tonight, he was pretty sure of being able to coax her around, because she used Teal'c as her reason for staying here last year, but this year he figured they'd just bring Teal'c along for the ride. Not fair to leave T cooped up under the Mountain for the holidays and hell, the Family's seen stranger. (Married 'em too, but Cam don't think Teal'c's in the market for a wife.) If Sam and Teal'c and Cassie were all heading down to the Clanstead with him, she'd've had to've come up with a pretty elaborate reason not to go, and then the four of them would have had a whole month to work on her.

It was a good plan. A great plan. A foolproof plan. And if Cam ever had any doubts he was a member of SG-1, tonight absolutely put paid to them, as his good-great-foolproof plan not only went up in flames, he set fire to it himself.

But from the moment he walked into Felger's living room he knew he didn't dare let her come face-to-face with Vala without setting terms. She'd had her blank, bland, _reasonable_ face on, and he's seen that one too damned often, right up to the point where she grabs a gun or takes a swing or just goes running off, and he was with the team that grabbed Vala and pulled her in: he figured they had one shot at cracking her, and empty threats wouldn't do it.

The one thing he doesn't like himself for very much right now is for not locking Dani in the holding cell when he could have, in the moment when she'd rolled over and showed him her belly and he'd realized they had a threat to make in that interrogation room that wouldn't be an empty one. His baby girl wants Vala dead. She probably wouldn't actually kill the woman (premeditatedly, in cold blood), and if she actually ended up murdering her, she'd be paralyzed with guilt and shame for the rest of her life. But she _wants_ her dead. And he'd wanted to show Vala that.

Outside shot. Swung, missed, and Dani might ( _might_ ) manage to choke down having him lay down the law to her (because this is sure as hell not her first barbeque) but he is pretty sure being stage-managed into playing the bogeyman is going to stick in her craw. Already has, judging from the way she lit out of the interrogation room, and he spent an hour putting out fires with the NID (Operation Save Felger's Ass) and nobody'd seen her so he ran up to 16 and chased down her Access Card use then asked Teal'c to see if she needed anything (everybody says Walter's telepathic, but Cam's money's on Teal'c, because Cam doesn't need to explain one damned thing). Then it was back to juggling plates, because plugging their leak isn't the end of their problems, it's the beginning.

He's read all the Briefing Books on the _Goa'uld_. History of the _Goa'uld_ Empire, Technological Development of the _Goa'uld_ , Political System of the _Goa'uld_ , Sex Life of the _Goa'uld_... They all agree on one important point: the _Goa'uld_ response to change is glacial. It's the main reason (in Dani's opinion) Earth's still here: not only have the _Goa'uld_ not gotten it together to react appropriately to the threat of the New Kids On The Block in the last ten years, it should have taken them somewhere between fifty and seventy-five years to get the idea ( _really_ get the idea) that dealing with the _Tau'ri_ required new tactics.

They already knew Anubis kind of broke the mold. Vala's presence on Earth proves Ba'al shatters it—and Ba'al hadn't even known about the existence of the _Tau'ri_ five years ago.

This is not good news.

"Sell her."

He looks up. Dani's leaning against the doorframe of his office. She's still wrapped in her outside coat.

"Sell... ?"

"Vala."

He stares at her because what she's saying isn't making sense yet and he's pretty sure they aren't on speaking terms right now so he's not quite sure why she's here. The way this is supposed to go (the way it's always gone before when she gets fussed) was she goes off somewhere and hides until she can pretend whatever-it-was hadn't happened or he goes and drags her out of her hidey-hole. Unless there's some urgent reason for them to play it another way, and as far as he knows, the Vala problem isn't urgent. He's had his sense of mortal peril recalibrated since he came here: urgent problems are ones that have to be solved within sixty minutes or everybody dies. Solving Vala is both critical and vital (to their survival—and to everybody else's, come to that), but it doesn't quite make the cut for "urgent". At least not in Cam's mind. Not yet.

She frowns at him like he's the slow kid in school. "What establishes value?"

Okay. He knows this one. Value isn't an absolute. Value is relative. Value is established by... "Value is set in a free market economy by the amount someone is willing to offer for goods or services," he says. 

She smiles tightly, like it hurts. "Very good. Ideally, of course, Anubis ought to be bidding against Ba'al, but I think that would be risky. We should just offer to sell her to Ba'al."

"And you don't think _that'd_ be risky?" he asks, wondering (quietly, privately, if this is what insanity looks like, if the moment they all dread, that he has to watch for, not only in himself but in everyone he leads, has come).

"Not as risky as dealing with Anubis," she says inarguably. There's a pause. "You'll probably want to let her know so she can make a counter-offer," she adds grudgingly (oh, god, she sounds so reasonable, as if she's making _sense_ ).

He scrubs a hand over his face in the fond hope all of this will shake down into something he can take to General Landry. It doesn't. "We're gonna sell Vala," he repeats.

"If she won't provide us with information, she's of no use to us, and in fact, as long as she's our prisoner, she's an active problem because of the risk she'll either escape or be freed. We won't execute her. It's ridiculous to just let her go, even though once we've held her for a couple of weeks she'll no longer have any information of any use to the enemy."

"So we sell her," he says, doing his best to match her tone of sweet reasonableness. He shouldn't find this as funny as he does, or maybe ridiculous is a better word. Or how about "batshit crazy?" (And he knows it's his usual reaction to discovering a situation is _completely and utterly screwed_ , but there's just no point in getting mad when you can develop a reputation for being cheerful and easygoing.) "You got Ba'al's cellphone number?"

He's gotten several variations on her "this is not an expression" face tonight (all of which are pretty expressive if you've ever bothered to pay attention, and he has) and the one Cam gets now tells him that (surprise, surprise) he's finally managed to drop one of those bottles of nitroglycerine he's been juggling all these months. She straightens up, shifting her weight away from his doorframe, stepping back out into the corridor at the same time. "You're busy," she says tonelessly. "Excuse me."

He doesn't go chasing after her because the corridors of the SGC at coming on for midnight are no place for a temper tantrum, no matter who's pitching it (him, her, both of them, because this situation's been spiraling out of control from the moment Sam called him with the ID on their leak). He gives it a long count of twenty (for some damned reason the elevators run slow after 2200 and catching up to her at the elevator would not be a good thing right now) then shuts everything down and heads for the Commissary. Stick a fork in him, he's done.

Standing in the elevator, staring at nothing, wondering what needs to be salvaged and how he's going to do that, he suddenly realizes (Sweet Jesus Fucking _Christmas_ ) that they _do_ have Ba'al's cell phone number. They've got that communication ball they picked up in Vala's apartment. Light it up, and odds are it will be Ba'al on the other end. She has to have assumed he remembered that and was blowing her off. Terrific. He props his arm against the wall and leans against it until the doors open.

Sam's in the Commissary, halfway to asleep over a cup of coffee, and it's too goddamned much to hope for Dani would be here too. He puts on his best cheerful face (knows it won't fool Sam, but him making the effort will be enough to let her know that while this might've been the day from Hell things aren't too serious right now) and walks over to the table.

"You about ready to call it a day?" Sam asks, straightening up and giving him a weary smile. She's looking around him (looking for Dani, he knows damned good and well) and he runs who was where when in his head and the answer he gets is that Sam probably hasn't seen Dani since they were all together in the Conference Room just after they arrived, so Sam has no idea that right now Dani would be happy to see him buried right next to Vala Mal Doran.

"Yeah, I just--" and he stops, because he can't think right now of _how he is going to fix this._ Not the big problem— _Goa'uld_ spies in the SGC and whether catching Vala's solved their problems—but the fact he took his best shot at cracking her, and it didn't work, and that means he hung Little Miss out to dry for nothing, and she and he both know it.

"I can sign a car out from the Pool and drive myself home," Sam says, watching his face. "Or, you know, Graham's probably still here, and—"

"No, no," he waves that aside. Dani's probably gone back to her office. If she can be pried loose with anything less than high explosives, the three of them can go together. If not, he'll be glad of Sam's company on the drive even if he doesn't mean to tell her who shot his dog. "Just gotta check one thing out and I'll be right with you." 

As he heads back down to 18 one more damned time, Cam reflects on the fact that there are things he doesn't like about his job. There are _times_ he doesn't like his job. This is one. When Cam was growing up, the big argument (not around the dinner table, because Momma had rules, but on the porch and under the tree and in the garage and yeah, in the kitchen, too) was about women serving in combat in an intentional and not by-accident way. And it was "yes" and "no" all over the place, and the argument never died, it just got overtaken by events, as the saying goes. He heard enough—on both sides of it—to know to keep his head down when he went off to join the Air Force.

Because the argument isn't about the fact women might get captured by the enemy and raped and tortured. If the enemy is a signatory to the Geneva Convention, the enemy shouldn't be doing that in the first place. In the second place, the enemy will do that no matter what sex the soldier is. And in the third place, women have been on the battlefield legitimately and otherwise—as soldiers, guerillas, and support personnel—in every conflict dating back to Thermopylae and beyond. They've certainly been a part of every war America has ever fought, from the War for Independence on. ("Women in combat" means "women getting combat pay and combat-track promotions"—Cam knows that's part of it.) It also isn't about the fact that women in combat units means the members of combat units will be having sex with each other, or having sex when they should be looking out for the enemy. They've always done the one. Some damned fools do the other. It isn't about the fact that (if there are women in combat) it might happen that their (male) fellow soldiers will fall in love with them and want to protect them. Cam's been deeply in love with every single person he's ever served under fire with. It's what combat does. He loved all the Snakeskinners, men and women, utterly and completely. And he ordered them to die. That's what happens. That's what you do.

No, the thing everybody was dancing around all those years ago was the idea of two solders happening to fall in love with each other in a _civilian_ kind of way and being in a hot zone together. And he's there now (everybody warned him he'd be commuting to the war; this is what the fallout is like). And there are times when it sucks. Not the times he would have guessed if they'd handed him this scenario as a thought experiment back at the Academy. Not the times when the two of them are shouting each other down, or he has to make an order stick neither of them likes. Times like now, when he's doing his ordinary job, making sure everybody in his command is as okay as they can possibly be after a day that's really sucked because each one of them was doing their job the best way they knew how.

If you and your girlfriend've had a big fight, the two of you kind of avoid each other until tempers cool a bit. And you can't do that if your girlfriend is someone in your command. Dani Jackson might have spent going on ten years at the war by now, but Cam's pretty sure that for all she knows about strategy and tactics and how to fight and how to die, where it counts—where it can hurt you—she's still a civilian, and always will be.

He gets to her office, and the door's open, only a couple of work lights on. He thinks it's a hopeful sign until he gets a look at what's inside. There are file folders everywhere—desk, tables, all over the floor—and she hasn't been out of his sight for more than fifteen minutes. She must've come back here and ripped the place apart. And then either killed herself or left, because the room is quiet, and he's trying to decide where she would have gone next, and who he can rope in on the hunt to reel her in _quietly_.

"You were right."

He takes a cautious step inside when he hears her voice. Not for fear of anything that might happen except a noisy scene he knows neither of them wants. There's no privacy down here, and it isn't fair to her to make this public when he's the cause of it start to finish. (Had to be done. Don't change any of the rest of it.) He can see her now. She's over in the corner at her computer, completely surrounded by file folders and staring at the screen. It looks like she's emptied out her file cabinets from top to bottom.

"Come again?" he says.

"You were right," she repeats, without looking up. "We can't go to the IOA and just tell them the communications device we confiscated can reach Ba'al. That presumes things we have to prove: that she's working for him. That it's safe to contact him, meaning he isn't here and can't get here fast. So we need to find some way to confirm his location first. And maybe Sammy can figure out how to field-test the _vo'cuum_ without actually _communicating_. Then we'll have two proofs."

_Okay, who are you and what have you done with my baby girl?_ This is not what he was expecting when he came down here. He takes a few more steps into the room and closes the door behind him.

"So you're, uh..."

"I'm looking at everything we know about Ba'al," she says patiently. This time she looks up. "You know," she adds, "we've probably been thinking about all of this entirely backwards. We've been considering this from the standpoint of Vala Mal Doran being Ba'al's agent, and she's admitted as much, but what about the agents Vala almost certainly has that Ba'al doesn't know about?"

"Vala's ... agents." He grabs a chair and sits down. Sam will forgive him for taking his time. You just can't rush bomb disposal.

Dani frowns at him as if he's being particularly dense this evening. "On Galar, Ba'al wanted to know who our spy was in Anubis's court, remember? Ba'al didn't intend to let us go, so he had no reason to provide us with disinformation in hopes we'd bring it home. So if Ba'al was trying to find out who was passing information to Yu, it wasn't him. But if Vala is working for Ba'al, and if Ba'al is a courtier of Anubis—and we know both these things are true—and if Vala were trying to double-cross Anubis, which she implied when she kidnapped me, isn't she a good candidate?"

"To have been passing information about Anubis to Yu," Cam says, in hopes he's still on the same page.

"Exactly!" Dani says, sounding pleased. "So if she has—or had—one spy network Ba'al doesn't know about, why shouldn't she have more than one? That means we have to start by convincing the IOA it's possible to contact Ba'al to sell him Vala—since someone in the IOA may be her spy, or Ba'al's spy, or both—then convince Vala the IOA is seriously considering this plan, and then see if that makes her more cooperative. Or, of course, we can actually try dealing with Ba'al, since we can offer him the spy in Anubis's court. I don't really recommend that option, but it's a possibility."

"Please tell me you didn't come up with this entire plan in the last fifteen minutes," Cam says quietly. 

"You wanted an effective threat, Cam," she answers softly. "This might work."

He shouldn't feel as if she's _rebuking_ him, because she isn't. He tried to use her as a threat. It didn't work. And she was furious—he's not wrong about that—but somewhere between there and here she turned herself inside out and is focusing on finding a threat that _will_ work.

Doing her job.

"But I've got a lot of research to do before we can talk to them. The IOA," she adds, looking back down at her screen and managing to sound both brisk and distracted at the same time. "I'll see if I can update our Briefing Book on Ba'al, and I'll write you up a memo on everything I'm extrapolating on Vala—cross-referenced with the last Galar mission—along with a proposal on how to get her to cooperate with us, even if it's under duress. It would be nice if we could use her to capture Ba'al, but... Oh, never mind. It will all be in my memo."

He gets to his feet, feeling as if his heart might crack open for love and pride (and more than a little relief, and there's shame mixed in with it, because what he's grateful for is not being called upon to put back together something he was afraid he broke). "Been a long day," he suggests.

"And it's about to be longer," she says, and there's an undertone of irritation in her voice now, a hint of "go away and don't bother me while I'm working," and there are plenty of times he'd push (because he's got the feeling Dani's little Ba'al-busting expedition is going to be one of those things where he comes in bright and early Monday morning to find out she hasn't moved from behind her desk once) but tonight isn't one of them.

She may be on to something with this theory. It's time-critical. They need to put this whole spy-thing to bed before it rots the SGC from the inside out. All good reasons to give Dani her head. He really hopes three good reasons outweigh one bad one: that he knows how hard he pushed her tonight and he doesn't like to think of what he might lose if he kept on pushing, and it wouldn't be Dr. Jackson's combat readiness. It would be Dani's cautious love.

And the fact he's worrying about things like that means _one_ of them needs to go off and take some time to think things over, and since it isn't going to be her, it had better be him. It's a helluva thing when he finds himself thinking he'd actually have preferred the screaming match.

So he lets himself out of her office, and closes her door behind him, and goes back up to the Commissary. Agent Barrett's joined Sam for a late night cup of coffee. Cam could almost pity the man, because the coffee on Third Shift is really awful unless you go down to the Infirmary and sweet-talk the medical staff. 

"Ready to go?" he asks Sam.

She stretches and yawns as she gets to her feet. "You shoot her? Or just lock her in a holding cell?"

He grins at her (doesn't matter what tales Agent Barrett's told out of school, not any more). "Left her working on a special project. Figure Jonas'll notice she's in there and bring her coffee at regular intervals tomorrow."

"Don't be too sure about that," Sam says darkly. "Rumor has it she sold him to Dr. Mertz for three candy bars when we got back from Tartarus."

"Dr. Mertz isn't in on weekends," Cam says. "Come on, babe. Let's get you home before Cassie rents your room."

And just like that—between one sentence and the next—it's all right. Dani will work through the weekend because that's what she does when she's fussed or preoccupied or she's just found something new and fascinating to look into. He'll let her, because at just this moment, there's no reason not to. He isn't angry with her for anything she's done tonight, and—for reasons he isn't quite clear on—she isn't angry with him either.

He'll take it.

#

Alone in her office, she juggles apples and oranges to make the fruit salad that will coax the rabbit out of the hat this time. Which of the "unknown _Goa'uld_ " the teams have encountered in the last decade could have been Ba'al? What do they know about him, what can they guess, how accurate are her guesses and what's the penalty for guessing wrong? She doesn't have the luxury of time: Vala Mal Doran is a ticking clock. Ba'al will miss her soon, Dani suspects, and breaking her, using her, exploiting her is time-critical.

Vala leads to Ba'al, Ba'al leads to Anubis, the war with Anubis is a war they dare not lose.

She leans back in her chair, stretching, and then rubs her eyes, feeling the aches and stiffness of a long day and no rest in sight. It occurs to her that Cam was here and she had a conversation with him, but when she looks around, her office is empty (corridor lights are down to Third Shift levels) and she realizes he's been and gone hours ago. 

She plays back the conversation in her mind, tracing her way back to the breathtaking "why" of it, the sense of shock and violation she felt at being used as a weapon of war, a _thing_ with no more autonomy than a gun or a grenade. It should hurt _(still, again, always)_ , but oddly, it doesn't. And she thinks of Jack, and how they'd always known each other's broken places and hidden hurts, and never used what they knew, even in the worst times, the times when their hopes and goals were farthest apart. She would have hit him (gladly), shot him, made a thousand different frontal assaults on the fortress of him rather than manipulating him, evoking his catalogue of loss and failure, pulling on any of the strings he'd left in her hands. He'd given her the same privacy even in the times of her defiance, anger, insubordination, insolence—her outright refusal to do what he wanted.

It's been a very long time since she's been willing to think about Jack at all (strength and touchstone and chaste uncarnal lover), and she's never wanted to summon up his ghost to disclose to her the benchmarks of the world she inhabits without him. But tonight is different, because she realizes (now, at last) that she and Cam know each other just as utterly, know each other's scars and shadows, and she has _(he has)_ proved that over and over by force and manipulation and ruthless use of what they know. But ruthlessness implies a lack of care, of concern, of balances weighed and debts owed and paid: it isn't ruthlessness, but pitilessness. He won't _(she won't)_ let kindness _(let pity)_ stand in the way of victory. The stakes are too high. And knowing Cam does not _(will not)_ pity her is like an award, a kiss, a benediction.

Comfort.

She knows millions of words in scores of languages, but she can't fully define what she feels in the moment of putting her realization into words, and there aren't words for this, anyway (you know it by being it; some secrets can't be told). Trust and relief and a common goal; selflessness and selfishness and condign sacrifice, and knowing Cam makes her remember all the things Jack taught her. Sometimes you have to spend a life—spend lives—not even your own life, and you do it because it has to be done but you never do it lightly. Clinically and calculatedly and intentionally, but never thoughtlessly. Never wastefully.

Cam is not Jack. The future will not repeat the past. _Ba'al was at the summit meeting Osiris crashed, but he wasn't a System Lord. Not then. Why would an underlord have been allowed to attend?_

The report she's skimming claims her attention again, and she lets the other thoughts go.

#

Somewhere on Sunday (late) she has a draft of her memo. It's a tissue of guesses and suppositions (possible previous Ba'al encounters, a theoretical history for Vala including questions they need to answer, and the most important one is: who was she host to? They know roughly how long ago she could have been freed, since the _Tok'ra_ only developed the method recently, but Dani can't find a _Goa'uld_ who vanished in the right time period, and too bad the _Tok'ra_ aren't taking their calls. There's also the point that when they met her Vala was stealing ships and selling them, and that implies Lucian contacts, and the idea that Vala Mal Doran is working for the Lucians—or for Ba'al _and_ the Lucians—just makes her tired), but it's the best she can do. She sends it to Sammy (who needs to figure out what information they can pull off the _vo'cuum_ ) and to Cam. And a copy to Teal'c, because it isn't fair to leave him out and he can backstop her understanding of _Goa'uld_ psychology besides.

Then she drags herself down to her on-Base quarters on 25, hoping nobody will bother her for at least twelve hours.

And hoping she can actually sleep.

#

Cam spends Monday morning on a plane.

0800 and he's in General Landry's office. Doesn't even get past the last checkpoint before he got the summons, so no chance to find out where Dani is first. He's obscurely pleased to see that Landry doesn't look as if he's caught a wink of sleep all weekend. And been chewing on lemons the whole time, too.

"Colonel Mitchell," Landry says.

"Sir," Cam answers.

There's the usual pause. (Cam wonders if they're playing "chicken" and nobody's told him; Landry always seems to be waiting for him to do something he never does.) "I have an assignment for you," Landry finally says (Cam wins again). "Ms. Mal Doran will be leaving for Area 51 today. I want you to go with her, and personally brief Colonel Patel on the procedures for her detention."

"Yes, sir." Meaning tell Patel not to listen to a word out of her mouth and keep the door locked tight, Cam's guessing. The timing sucks, but wearing the uniform means taking orders. He'd better give Sam a heads-up before he goes.

"I'm glad you approve, Colonel Mitchell. You'll just have time to change before the transport gets here. _Chief!_ "

"Yes, sir, General," Walter says, his attention focused on the clipboard in his hands. "Transport to Peterson arrives in ten minutes; the plane is ready to go as soon as the prisoner and her escort arrive; Colonel Mitchell will bring briefing materials and a tracking device, Dr. Brightman says the locator chip she implanted is functioning perfectly."

Cam figures that's his cue. He always has a random impulse to salute, even though they're inside and it isn't proper. He thinks Landry would like it anyway.

He doesn't have time to do anything but scramble into his Class As and run for it. Colonel Harper and his team (in full rattle) are already in the van. So's Vala. Chained hand and foot, and that would reassure Cam a lot more if he didn't have a suspicion she could snap those chains if she put a mind to it. She's doing a good Tragic Victim act, but she's got a ways to go to beat his Cousin Beelie's best work, so Cam doesn't pay it any nevermind. Harper hands him a zat. And they're off.

He expects her to make a break for it at the airfield—because he would, in her place—but she keeps up with the startled fawn act, which doesn't make Cam feel any better. Area 51 is one of the hybrid facilities the Program's spawned like a plague of frogs: it's at Groom Lake (technically at Edwards, but only on paper; Dreamland is a remote detachment site), but the place they're taking Vala (the place all their offworld loot ends up) is a civilian facility under NID control. Colonel Patel runs the circus, but there's a Mr. Vincent Armstrong, NID, pulling the strings.

So if Armstrong is one of Vala's hypothetical spy ring, they're pretty much screwed.

It's a short flight. Vala tries a few conversational gambits. Harper and his men apparently have orders not to talk to her, but Cam doesn't. He doesn't see a lot of harm in small talk. They're taking her to a long-term holding facility. No, she doesn't get to make a phone call. No, she doesn't get to see a lawyer. (Guess she's been on Earth a while.) No, they have no plans to let her out. "'Less we find a buyer for you," Cam suggests, and after that Vala shuts up.

It's only after he gets there that he discovers _just how thoroughly he's screwed._

The hand-over isn't a problem. Vala's got a nice little cell, standard detention aside from the fact the whole front's open. Iron bars and a force field both. 24/7 surveillance, two guards outside at all times, and if the cameras go down, the cell is automatically flooded with knockout gas. Colonel Patel tells him all the details while they're having a little chat about _keeping their hands on her_ where Cam tries to impress on the Colonel just how hard that is without coming across like he thinks the man doesn't know his job. Cam's sure he does. But Vala's damned tricky. And they both know that if the NID trumps their ace and decides to let her out, there isn't anything either of them can do about it.

From there he goes to see General Dietrich. He's the Base commander. Courtesy call. Expected.

"Well, Colonel, how does it feel to be back in your old stomping grounds?" General Dietrich asks.

The Snakeskinners—Project Heliotrope on the books—were based out of Nellis but mostly flew out of here. He'd lived in an apartment complex just outside of Vegas, along with everybody else from the black programs.

"Just passing through, sir," he says. Their flight back leaves in about two hours; if he's lucky, he'll be back at the Mountain in time to make sure Little Miss eats lunch.

"I wouldn't be too sure about that, Colonel," the General says, smiling like he's about to hand Cam a nice big lollipop. "When I heard you were coming out for a visit, I made a couple of phone calls. You know we've been trying to get the 302 program back up and running."

"Yes, sir," Cam says automatically. He's trying to reconcile "a couple of phone calls" with the idea that General Dietrich doesn't think he's leaving, and can't make it come out sensible. Sure, you can be transferred on a whim. But Landry isn't crazy. And transfer paperwork takes weeks to go through. So he nods and listens while the General tells him about their troubles with recruiting pilots who could handle zero gee (been there, wore out the t-shirt), and how they've got the Snakeskinners back to full strength again, but how they could use a little … polish.

From the only man who's actually flown a 302 in combat against _al'kesh_ and Death Gliders and lived to tell the tale.

"Sir, that's… very kind of you," Cam says, because you don't just rise up on your hind legs and ask a two-star if he's gone crazy, "but I'm sure--"

"Good," General Dietrich tells him. "As of now, you're TDY to Nowhere Field. Your own bird, and all the flight time you want. Major DaSilva is looking forward to working with you."

Cam knows Xavier DaSilva. Fighter pilots are a small club. Xave the Brave was on the long-list for Heliotrope when Cam came in.

"How long, sir?" Cam asks, doing his best not to sound like he's just been kicked in the balls. "I mean, ah…" _I've got a few slightly more important things on my plate right now, General, sir. Like keeping Earth from being turned into a ball of molten lava by a crazy alien._

"General Landry drove a hard bargain, Colonel. But you're ours for the next two weeks. No reason it couldn't be longer, you know."

"Yes, sir. Thank you sir," Cam says.

"See Major Pacheco on your way out. He'll see to it you have everything you need."

Interview's over. Cam gets to his feet and wonders how fast he can get to a phone.

#

She wakes up fifteen minutes after she was supposed to be at her desk, feeling like she's been hit over the head with (in one of Cam's memorable phrases) a sack of hammers. (She's never figured out why somebody would _have_ a sack of hammers in the first place, but most of Cam's intensifying phrases don't make a lot of sense. There aren't any smart rocks, just for example, unless Sammy's decided to build one.)

Cam isn't here. Not that he'd be sleeping on-Base; that's her particular vice, and she has a vague memory of telling him to go home some time on Saturday. But he'd find her and wake her and bring her coffee. Unless he's mad at her? It's possible. She doesn't really remember much after Vala's interrogation. But she doesn't think so. Maybe he thinks she's mad at him?

She might be. She isn't sure. Mostly she just feels… bruised. And entirely too conversant with the SGC's history with the _Goa'uld_ just now.

Oh, god. It's Monday. She's late.

She gets to the Conference Room fifteen minutes after the start of the Monday Meeting, earning her a death-glare from General Landry. (Graham would have given her a wake-up call, but she doesn't think he knew she was still here.) She gets off with a "glad you could finally join us, Dr. Jackson," from Landry, and slides into her seat beside Amelia.

Barrett's here. Cam isn't. (Colonel Reynolds is.) She tries to catch Sammy's eye. (Felger isn't here.) What the hell happened while she was asleep? It only goes to prove her point: sleep is a very bad thing. Sammy is avoiding her look. Dani flips through the agenda and discovers SG-1 has exactly no missions this week, but the rest of the mission schedule looks normal.

Oh god, she didn't have time to get coffee before she got here. She'd steal Amelia's, but Amelia drinks tea. She's almost desperate enough to steal it anyway, except for the fact tea doesn't contain nearly enough caffeine.

Agent Barrett gives a highly-redacted report on their identification and capture of the _Goa'uld_ spy. Apparently Vala's been moved, though Barrett doesn't say to where. General Landry says this doesn't mean they can exercise any less caution in their offworld activities (because the Teams all think it's a goddamned amusement park out there, of course).

Sammy gives a brief-yet-content-free report on new triumphs in Physics and Engineering. Amelia covers AA&T as far as she can, but Anubis's Ancient-language database is their _topic du jour_ , so Dani has to stumble through that. She barely keeps herself from saying Anubis is opening a chain of tanning salons (old joke by now, but Cam liked it). General Landry suggests sending copies of what she has to Atlantis on _Daedalus's_ next run. She starts to lecture him on Ancient dialectical variation before she stops herself. (Coffee. She needs coffee.) Sending what they have to Atlantis is going to be useless (she manages not to say that), especially without her (still unfinished) paper on Ancient, but while it's futile, it isn't actually harmful, so she manages to agree that it's a good idea.

She has a pounding headache by the time the meeting's over, and no real idea of what was said. And when they all finally get to their feet, General Landry says he'd like to see her in his office, Dr. Jackson. She looks longingly at the coffee as she passes, but she really can't stop while Landry is striding meaningfully into the distance.

"I'm sending you to Washington, Dr. Jackson," he says as soon as she sits down.

She stares at him. _For being late to the meeting?_ "Um… now?" she manages. "General?"

"The IOA is understandably distressed by our continuing breaches of security," General Landry says with lead-pipe irony. "They'd like you to go and reassure them."

She knows she should say something, but all she can do is stare. Reassure them? Of what? They've got Vala (and have hopefully found a nice dark dungeon for her), but they have no idea if they have everyone she's been talking to. And so what? Anubis is still out there, armed, insane, and dangerous. And oh yeah: coming for them as soon as he's wiped out everybody else. Which he shows no signs of not doing. "Go to Washington?" she finally asks.

"If it isn't too much trouble," General Landry says, and she can tell she's pissed him off somehow, but she doesn't know what to do about it.

"The interrogation," she finally says.

"I know it will come as a surprise to you, Dr. Jackson, but you don't have to do everything around here by yourself. See Graham about your travel arrangements." He picks up a folder ostentatiously. She gets to her feet.

Graham's office is down the hall. Not nearly as nice. No window (General Landry has a nice view of the Briefing Room and the Stargate). But he has a coffee maker, and he hands her a cup without even asking. (It's better than the stuff in the Commissary.) And because he is her true dear friend, he waits until she's on her second cup before trying to talk to her.

"Your first meeting with the IOA is scheduled for tomorrow morning," he says apologetically. "I can send you commercial if you want."

"Please." She hates flying at the best of times, but if she's on a commercial flight at least she can drink. "First meeting?" she says.

"General Landry feels it would be a good time for you to talk to Homeworld," Graham says in his best neutral tones. "He's expecting you to be there about a week, if all goes well."

She gets up to pour herself another cup of coffee. "Cam? Felger? Vala?" she asks.

"Dr. Felger is on vacation until New Year's. Colonel Mitchell took Vala Mal Doran out to Area 51 this morning," Graham says. "He's going to be staying for a couple of weeks."

The 302 program. Adrenaline shocks her more awake than any amount of coffee could. "He's coming back?" she asks.

"It's only temporary," Graham says. "General Dietrich asked for him."

She has no idea who General Dietrich is, and she doesn't care. He would have had to ask Landry. And Landry could have said no.

If he'd seen any reason to.

Which he clearly didn't.

Did Cam even see her memo? Two weeks is too long to wait before trying her idea; Vala will probably have escaped by then, and even if she hasn't, she'll have been questioned (by idiots)—meaning she'll have enough information not to fall for it. _I need to redraft it into a form that won't make Landry's head explode, coordinate with Sammy, and get him to do it within the next three days._ She groans faintly. Graham pokes at a laptop. "I can get you on a seven o'clock flight out of Denver," he says. "Do you want to leave from the house or from here?"

"Here." She'll need to go home and pack, but she wants every possible minute to work.

This is the worst possible time to be yanked away from her job.

"I'll make all your arrangements. The suite at the Watergate is free; we can put you there."

She's spent more time in Washington than she wants to think about, a lot of it there; the SGC actually maintains a year-round suite in the hotel part of the complex. "Yeah. Fine. Thanks, Graham. I, um, I need somebody to drive me home, kind of… now. They can wait. I won't be long." She tries to remember if she has to do anything else to prepare for an extended absence. She can't. There's probably food in her refrigerator, but she won't have time to deal with it.

"Someone will be waiting by the time you get there," Graham promises. He looks sympathetic, and she smiles.

"Can I…?" she asks, gesturing with her cup. He waves permission. She fills it one more time and goes up to the Changing Rooms.

At the house, she tears through her closet, throwing things into a suitcase. "Talk to the Russians" suits. The contents of her go-bag (since she sleeps naked at home but you never know who might break into your hotel room in the middle of the night). All the stupid accessories that go with a contemporary woman's dress outfit. At the last minute, she adds Sammy's necklace. She grabs her biggest briefcase (she'll fill it at the SGC) and is out the door again in under ten minutes, barely remembering to set the security alarm. She'll probably forget it's on by the time she gets back, but the service is used to that.

Back at the SGC, she downloads everything she has on Ancient, and the images from Anubis's database, to her laptop. She's not supposed to take material like that out of the SGC, but if Landry's exiling her for a week, she's at least going to get some work done. Unlike Felger, she doesn't screw with her security software: mistype the password twice and the machine will transmit its location and then destroy itself. Graham has already delivered the official briefing materials to her office; she adds them to her briefcase (she wrote them, and can recite them word-for-word, but she knows from experience the IOA prefers visual aids). She rummages through her desk, adding her emergency coffee stash.

She still has a couple of the chocolate bars Cam leaves for her. She hesitates, then throws them in the trash. Childish. Sue her. She's missed breakfast and lunch, but she can't spare the time. Maybe they'll feed her on the plane.

She skims her email queue, sends a memo to Amelia saying she's going to be away for a week and possibly more, with cc's to Nyan and Jonas. Then she opens her report again. What would do for Cam won't do for Landry. She sighs, and gets to work. Composing the message to Yu was easier.

Some time later she blinks back to awareness. Sammy's there.

"I heard you're going to DC for a few days," Sammy says, holding out coffee.

"Did you read it?" Dani asks, taking the cup. _Did you read my memo?_ Sammy's brought a carafe, too. Sammy is her friend.

"I think I can design a method of tracing the _vo'cuum_ 's signal without letting it reach its destination, yes," Sammy says. "So we can get coordinates for whatever location Vala's been reporting to. It's just a matter of--" There's a lot of explanation. Dani tunes most of it out. 

"We need to interrogate Vala again," she says, when Sammy stops. "And telling her we know who she's reporting to, or at least where, should convince her--"

She stops. Sammy's looking unhappy. "General Landry needs to sign off on it," she says. "He'll probably want to wait until we have Jay's debriefing."

"Felger doesn't know anything," Dani says.

"I know," Sammy says.

Cam could convince Landry. Cam could write a content-free memo that would say all the things she needs to convince the General to do it her way.

Cam isn't here.

"He sent him to Area 51," she says. "For the 302s."

Sammy follows the change of subject effortlessly. Sammy's had eight years, waking and sleeping, to learn that. And now Sammy looks even less happy, and Dani's thinking of Kelowna, of Cam flying against Anubis's ship.

And what happened.

"It's only temporary," Sammy says. "I'm going to give him a call tonight. I'll tell him you said hi."

It's a declarative sentence, but inflected as a question. Dani isn't sure what the answer is. "I sent him the memo, but he probably didn't see it. I'm going to… I'm doing another draft for Landry."

It's all she can do.

"Call me when you get there," Sammy says. "Try not to shoot anybody."

"I'm flying commercial," Dani answers grumpily. "I don't get to take my gun."

Sammy just ruffles her hair.

She isn't finished with her revision of the memo by the time Graham arrives to roust her out and put her in the car to take her to the airport (and give her yet another folder full of documents, this one with her Washington schedule). She might have been if she hadn't had to deal with the "just one thing" interruptions, but they're a part of the job. She wishes she could just send it to Graham and have him convert it into Landryspeak, but she doesn't want to put him in the position of knowing something Landry's supposed to know before he knows it. At least, not with the information coming from her.

It occurs to her she'll get to see General Hammond while she's in Washington. She'll ask him how to make it work.

The rest of the day is a waste of time. An hour to the airport. An hour waiting for her flight. Three and a half hours in the air, and a time zone change, so it's midnight local before she's in the car heading for the hotel. Her first meeting is tomorrow at ten: US, Russia, China, Canada, France, Sweden and a good time will be had by all.

She checks her email before she unpacks. (Room service is on the way: Scotch, coffee, and chocolate cake.) There's email from Sammy: _Do you want me to water the plants?_ Dani doesn't have any plants, and never has: she logs out of the security shell and in to her Hotmail account ( <geekgirl1997@outlook.com>—Sammy set it up), and sure enough, there's another email (<blackwidow2001@outlook.com>—Teal'c says it has something to do with comic books). The habit of concealment, of double-blinds, is so old Dani doesn't remember (tries very hard not to remember) where it came from, the legacy of General West and General Bauer and Senator Kinsey and Colonel Simmonds and Elizabeth Weir and all the other people they've had to lie to, down through the years, to do their jobs...

It's gossip, normalcy, nothing illegal, nothing classified, but innocence can be used to make a noose and even they aren't cleared to know what keywords the datasniffers are going after this week. Any week. Ever.

Sammy says she talked to Cam, went over to his place and packed him a bag and cleaned out his fridge, and does Dani want her to check the house while Dani's gone?

_In your copious free time,_ Dani emails back. _Tell Cassie I'm sorry we didn't get to hang out this time._

She's hit "send" before she realizes she didn't ask how Cam is.

#

By the time she gets to Tuesday, the subtext is plain: the IOA has unilaterally decided Anubis is dead, Ba'al isn't their problem, and the fact the SGC was somehow infiltrated by Ba'al's spy is proof the Program needs to be transferred to IOA control. Something they keep trying to get her to say, which is why they're all still here.

She keeps talking about proof, something that doesn't win her any friends.

"We killed him twice and it didn't take," she says. "What is this supposed to be: third time lucky?"

"You said your mission to Tartarus was a success, Dr. Jackson," Woolsey says. "You also said you had strong indications that was Anubis's throneworld."

"And did I tell you we found his body?" she demands. (Woolsey came to them after P3X-666 and said saving SG-13 hadn't been cost effective, said they shouldn't have gone, and she will never forgive him.)

"You said you did not have sufficient time to search the entire facility." That's Shen.

"We searched the throne room. He wasn't there."

"And yet--"

"It will undoubtedly take the _Goa'uld_ some time to adjust to Anubis's death," Colonel Chekov says. "It is important we use this time to our best advantage."

"Because you did such a good job with your last try at running a Stargate program?" she asks. This is probably a tactical error on her part, as they all start talking about their plans for a new improved Stargate program. Which coincidentally cuts the US out of the loop along with most of the people who've been going through the gate for almost a decade now.

"Even if Dr. Jackson is correct--" That's Rogers. Go, Canada. "And Anubis has somehow survived, isn't it possible that he'll decide Earth is, well, too big a mouthful?"

"No," she says. "His intention has always been to get rid of everybody else first. We have no reason to think he hasn't survived, and--"

"Your opinion of his strategy. This comes from a statement made by one of the _Goa'uld_?" LaPierre, mangling the tripthong out of sheer perversity, she's sure.

"From the First Prime of Lord Yu. Oshu. A Jaffa."

LaPierre smiles thinly. "There's no reason to believe he was telling you the truth."

There's no reason to think he wasn't.

And so it goes.

#

On Tuesday, Cam gets to meet the new Snakeskinners: eight women, sixteen men. Just about backward from the original, but the new pilots are "the best of the rest", something Cam tries really hard to not even think anywhere in their vicinity. Major DaSilva puts a good face on things and says all the right words.

Cam knows better.

He's "The Boy Who Lived". He's the _only survivor_ of Heliotrope Flight. Twenty-four men and women took off that day, and one came back, and none of these people want anything to do with him. He's a jinx. Bad hoodoo. Trouble.

It's something he can't just laugh off. He can see it in their eyes. In the way conversation stops every time he walks into a room. Or comes anywhere near one of the birds on the ground. He'd like to call it superstition, pretend it doesn't hurt as much as it does.

Only he can't.

When you're up there on the edge of the blue, flying by instinct and smell as much as by your instruments, luck is the only edge you have. That, and the belief you're going to get through to the other side and make it home.

He's proof that luck runs out. Or worse.

Nobody says a word. They don't have to. _Funny thing how you managed to survive when nobody else did, isn't it?_

They don't want him here. He doesn't want to be here. But he's here to do a job. He does his best. At least Tuesday is ground school and lectures. But on Wednesday, there's an exercise.

He does every damned thing he can think of to get out of it, or at least to get out of flying in it. They've got half-a-dozen _tel'taks_ stockpiled out here now. He could go up in one of those. Or take a Strike Eagle up (no chance of keeping up with the cool kids, but they aren't going to be trying to outrun him). No dice. It's him on one side and Xavier on the other, twelve and twelve and loser buys the beer. He doesn't know how they decide who gives up their seat so he can fly.

He doesn't think it's going to go well. It goes worse than he expects.

#

Sammy actually phones on Wednesday night.

Wednesday has been a repeat of Tuesday, and Dani knows she can expect the same thing for Thursday and Friday, with the added joy of this so-called briefing having now turned into a fishing expedition covering the entire history of their interactions with the _Goa'uld_ , because Lindquist (yeah, Sweden) thinks they should be _negotiating_ with the _Goa'uld_ and the rest of them think they should be negotiating with the Lucians (and Chekov can't resist a few jabs about "breakaway republics" and okay, sure, maybe they should just send the Stargate to Chechnya).

At least she managed to grab General Hammond for a drink Wednesday evening (the formal Homeworld briefing is supposed to be on Friday, if the IOA is done with her), and makes her pitch, but the General isn't optimistic about the chances of them being able to actually _do_ it. He tells her (off the record, and they both know exactly how much that means) that NID is demanding Vala be turned over to them, meaning removed from Area 51 so they can hide her away somewhere else. And at this point it's already been 72 hours, so Vala's missed her weekly chat with Ba'al, which means it's already probably too late to try selling her back to him. Or to say they would: if she missed her check-in, she had a problem, and Ba'al is smart enough to cut his losses. That means he no longer trusts her (as much as he ever did; Dani thinks he's smarter than that), and so Vala has no reason to cooperate now. They could still try a bluff, but it would work better if they actually _had_ the location she's been reporting to (no joy from Sammy). And right now (General Hammond tells her regretfully), they can't settle who gets to talk to her, because if it's the NID, they'll move her first. (The second thing will be that she escapes.) So nobody can. (Especially her, that goes without saying, especially after what the tapes from the interrogation room show, and she really needs to thank Cam for that some time.)

She goes back to her hotel and starts getting out her work documents, because the only thing making this little vacation bearable is extra time to work. The memo she's spent so much time on is a dead issue now, but at least part of it can be salvaged to update their briefing book on Ba'al. When her phone rings, it's her cell, not the room phone, and she has to hunt to find it. It's at the bottom of her briefcase.

"What?" she demands, silencing _the most annoying ringtone ever_.

"Dani? It's Sam. There's been an accident in Nevada."

#

Nobody dies. That's the good thing.

He doesn't even try to tell himself it isn't his fault. It is. The 302s can take out anything else built on Earth, but when they're deployed, it isn't going to be against things from Earth. It's going to be death gliders, _al'kesh_. Wraith darts. Whatever the Lucians might have that they haven't seen yet.

Conventional tactics won't work. And if they're engaging the enemy anywhere they have a local vertical, they're already screwed. So the plan is, they take the 302s up to the exosphere (trying not to hit the ISS on the way, though he bets those guys've seen stranger things) and run some zero-G intercept and evade exercises. None of their weapons are live; they aren't carrying missiles and the rail guns have been replaced with low-yield lasers. The on-board computer will record any hits, and tell you when you're dead.

Xavier and his kids go up first. Red Team. They're going to play the bad guys for the first round. All Blue Team (Cam) has to do is stop them. 

_You can do this,_ he tells himself, but the louder thought drowns it out: _Try not to get anyone killed._

Red Team comes up over the horizon about the time Cam's thinking he brought Blue Team to the wrong address. He's too damned slow giving the order to close. The ghosts screaming in his headset make it a little hard to concentrate. Red Team gets by, and then they're in atmosphere, and he _can't let them reach the ground._ On his order, Blue Team breaks, diving past them and coming up from below. They're low enough for the lasers to have air to ionize; the beams are doubled, appearing in the HUD and in the sky. 

First blood to Blue Team, but it isn't going to help. He ignores the urge to hang back, ignores the instincts all screaming caution. That's when it happens.

His wingman's name is Harris, callsign Jello. He told him to stick close. Too damned close, but in his head he's still fighting the last battle. Antarctica. Where the _al'kesh_ split them up and cut them to pieces.

When you get an enemy kill, the first thing you do is get the hell out of the way, because the first thing the enemy does is usually explode. The computer tells him he's scored on Braveheart's wingman, so Cam automatically jinks his bird out of the blast range.

Jello isn't fast enough.

_(Not his fault. Your fault. You should have known he was there.)_

There's a flash of _tooclose whatthehell is that_ and he's doing everything he can to get out of the way, but it isn't like there's much elbow room in a six-way dogfight and not a lot of time to debate. He turns a belly to butt smackdown into a jarring scrape, quick enough that he could be imagining it. Only he isn't.

When they get down—all of them; Harris is in one piece—he walks away from the ship without looking back.

#

Sammy explains, but Dani knows she doesn't understand what Sammy's telling her (trying to tell her). (People get hurt in training exercises all the time; everyone's alive.) She takes everything the words don't say from Sammy's voice: somehow this is something very bad. Dani thinks of Rand, of Kelowna. Of Cam in her office one day a lifetime ago.

_"And maybe you think we were just stupid! Maybe you think their lives weren't as important as yours! But those were my friends I went up with that day, and not one of them made it home…"_

"We don't leave anyone behind," she says aloud.

"Dani?" Sammy says, and she knows she's interrupted her. "Are you all right?"

"Yes," she answers. "I'm fine." Everything's so clear now, and if clarity is only a temporary illusion, it doesn't matter. She knows what she has to do. 

"Tell him I'm coming."

#

He doesn't really remember making it to bed. The fact he closed the place up tight and turned on the heat doesn't help matters either. He's hung-over, dehydrated, and the phone's cheerful tireless ( _shrill_ ) ringing is not helping matters at all. He struggles out from under the sweat-soaked pile of blankets (the cold isn't in his bones, it's somewhere deeper, and it never goes away). It's probably Colonel Dietrich calling to have one of those "leadership chats" Cam's so fond of. (Right now he's trying to remember where his pants are. And if he hit anybody.) He's right about that, but it's the last thing he gets to be right about all day. Dietrich keeps trying to put the blame on the 'Skinners for the fuckup, and Cam isn't going to let him, but he would really like to get through this without having to say flat out that he shouldn't be let within a hundred miles of a 302 ever again because his nerve's gone and his dancing days are over. Because that'd get back to Landry, and Cam knows damned well the man is looking for a face-saving way to _turf him_ and he isn't going to let that happen. So it isn't really a very satisfactory Come to Jesus for either of them, and Cam would like to think that might be making the Colonel reconsider the acquisition of one Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Everet Mitchell, USAF, SG-1. A guy can dream.

He goes from there to his temporary office to finish the after-action report he set aside yesterday in favor of drinking. There's half-a-dozen messages from Sam, but he doesn't want to talk to her now any more than he did on Monday. Nothing from Little Miss. She's probably noticed he's gone by now; what she thinks about it is anybody's guess. They didn't part on the best of terms. They parted on pretty damned ambiguous terms, and it's been almost a week, which is plenty of time for Dani to have both sides of an argument without consulting him. He's going to count himself lucky she didn't show up here a couple of days ago ready to bury the hatchet. In Vala's skull.

He'd like to hide out in here until they get tired of him and let him go _home_ , but he at least figures he's got a little more time before he has to face the music than he gets when DaSilva comes looking for him.

He says they just got Harris's bird back, and he thought Cam might like to sit second for the check flight. Which DaSilva will be doing himself, he takes pains to point out.

Oh, yeah, sure. Nothing but normal here.

He wants to do this about as much as he'd like to spend another fifteen hours on a glacier in Antarctica, but the unwritten rules are as binding as the ones in the UCMJ, so he goes and suits up.

Second seat isn't a familiar spot, but hell, he wouldn't want him in the driver's seat either. Xave doesn't spend his time doing tourist stuff to try to make him lose his lunch. It's all professional and by the book. Until the point where they get up to the edge of the black and DaSilva cuts power. 

It's quiet.

Bright, because Earth is right outside the window. Air, because oxy's on a separate system, and anyway, there's enough in the cabin to last until they hit the ground, because physics is a bitch, and right now it feels like they're floating, but Cam knows they're falling.

"So," Xave says, mild as milk. "You're ground forces now."

"Yeah," Cam says, just as mild. "That's right."

Earth rotates slowly across their field of view as the 303 spins. It's above them now. If he thought of it as "down" he'd be feeling queasy right now. He remembers long ago instructors: _Your ass is down. Everything else is decoration, friendlies, or targets._

They sit in silence for a while. Earth gets bigger. He starts to feel the lying tug of gravity.

"You got the Medal," Xave says. The Medal of Honor, of which there are damned few living recipients.

"Yeah," Cam says, because there's no arguing with the facts. "If you want to ask me if I think it was a good deal, you better wait until we're on the ground." Because he'd give it up in a heartbeat if it meant his boys and girls were still alive.

They're falling faster now. Tail down, because the engines are the heavy part. He can't see Earth any more. Just stars. That'll change in a few minutes.

"You could've come back," Xave says, about the time Cam starts to hear the thin whistle of atmosphere screaming over the hull. The stars are fading, twinkling as they go.

"No," Cam says finally. "I couldn't."

He thinks about the Might Have Been. Coming out of rehab and back here. Building a new command. Getting the call—one he prays Xave never gets, because it'll mean they're _totally screwed_ —and going up there with twenty-four lives riding on his skill, his judgment, his reflexes and nerve.

And he knows it's the last thing on Earth…

…he wants. Or wanted. Or should do. Not _could_ do, because he did it when it counted. But he doesn't know if he could do it again. If he's got anything left to give in that bright particular direction, and that's the thing no combat pilot can afford to wonder. Not whether he's going to live—because you always think that—but whether he can be _good enough._

So he sits and listens to the wind, and feels the gravity in his bones, and eventually Xave lights her up and puts them down.

Nothing's fixed and nothing's settled. He still doesn't guess Major DaSilva's going to be any too sorry to see him go. But he doesn't think he needs to worry about taking a header down a flight of stairs any time before he does.

#

It takes her all of Thursday to get her own way. A call to General Hammond (they can waive the formal briefing; everything he needs to know is—technically—in the briefing book she assembled for the IOA). The threat of a call to President Hayes. She gives the whole briefing on Anubis, Ba'al, and their galactic situation (again) in a single two-hour-long sentence, uninterrupted solely due to the fact she keeps talking while they're trying to stop her.

"He's alive, or he isn't. We don't know. If he's alive, he's coming to Earth to destroy it. We don't know his timetable. If he isn't, somebody else is: Ba'al, the Lucians, hell, maybe the Replicators will be back. We don't know why a freed host was cooperating with Ba'al, we don't know why Ba'al is cooperating with Anubis, we don't know if destroying Tartarus has had any effect on Anubis's plans, and we don't know if Ba'al has any other agents here on Earth. If we're lucky, we might be able to find out some of those things. I suggest, ladies and gentlemen, that you leave us to do our jobs. I'm going home to do mine."

She gets to her feet.

"Dr. Jackson!" Mr. Woolsey barks. "We aren't finished with you!"

"Really?" she says. "I'm finished with you. I've told you everything I know. I even wrote it down and gave you copies. Do what you want with it. I have a job to do. At least until such time as you control the Stargate, after which I'm going to be looking for a nice deep hole to hide in, and pretty soon after that you're going to be explaining to anybody left alive on Earth that Anubis wasn't actually a threat."

She knows Landry is going to make her pay for this. But he'll have to catch her first.

Since nobody arrests her after she leaves, she's on an eight o'clock flight to Vegas. Five hours in the air. Four time zones later she's on the ground at McCarran International, and objectively, two hours have passed. It's one in the morning in her brain, but it's ten pm on the ground. She supposes it's an argument for the viability of time travel: if you go far enough fast enough, you can arrive before you left.

In a technical sense, she's a fugitive. Isn't supposed to be here at all, even if she is technically done with her visit to Washington and (more or less, and rather less than more) had permission to leave. But the only place she was supposed to go was home: Colorado Springs. Not to Nevada, to be sitting here in her rental car with a wholly-inappropriate wardrobe, a briefcase full of beyond top secret information about homicidal space aliens, and no real idea of what to do next. To complicate matters, on the plane she managed a breakthrough on the Ancient database. Half of it is Ancient. The other half is phonetic _Goa'uld_ rendered using Ancient glyphs. (She really hates Anubis right now.) There are enough reasonably-fluent _Goa'uld_ speakers at the SGC that (depending on how much of what they have is transliterated Parseltongue), they might be able to crack the rest.

Which would mean going there. And telling them.

(" _Mashur-nat_ ". It's _Goa'uld_ for "mutation", and she thinks again about the gene-scrambler they found in Anubis's secret lab. What was he mutating, or who, and how, and why?)

Which is not why she pissed off most of the IOA and flew to Nevada on her own dime. (If Landry doesn't know where she is at this exact moment—she thinks, in sudden annoyance, of the transponder embedded in her back—he will the moment her credit card use hits the system. Unusual spending patterns and large purchases are always red-flagged; she knew that even before Sammy told her about the constant security review she lives under. Security for archaeologists and other valuable items the government does not want to suddenly go missing. As she nearly is.) But now that she's here, that moment of remembered clarity has (as expected) dimmed. She's here because Cam's in trouble. Some kind of trouble that Sammy couldn't put into words. (She didn't have to.)

She just doesn't know exactly what to do about it.

If he was locked in a dungeon somewhere, she'd know exactly what to do. (Lucky her.)

But she heads for Area 51, because she has a full tank of gas and she knows the way. She can probably talk her way onto the Base. And after that… she'll improvise.

#

Friday, and Cam is not quite counting the hours until he gets to go _home_ , but he's never been so happy to see a great big pile of paperwork in his life.

They don't want him here. He doesn't want to be here (nothing's changed in the last week). Once upon a time there might have been something he could teach them. But now the only thing he can teach them is how to get themselves killed, and everybody but the brass knows it.

He wants the sky so badly he can taste it. And he'll never have it again. Not that way. Not the right way, with the easy conviction of his own immortality, with the thoughtless ease of solving puzzles in the instant before they coalesce, with the simple conviction that pulling the trigger, pressing the button, is nothing more fraught than answering a question (he hasn't had that since Afghanistan, not really, but over Antarctica he got it back for a brief shining breathless instant before everything was taken away).

Is it better to have something close enough to what you once had to mock you, or is it better not to have it at all?

He wishes there was one right answer to that question. And that he knew it.

When his phone rings, he can't decide whether it's reprieve or damnation. The fact that it's Colonel Patel on the other end of the line, not Colonel Dietrich, does not aid Cam's reality comprehension skills. Nor does the fact it is 1028, and Colonel Patel is saying Dr. Jackson is here to see him. He's actually running down the list of all the Doctors Jackson he knows when he realizes which one it has to be, and Cam simply can't make this make sense right now. If it was an emergency, Dani would've called and there'd be a 303 on the way to pick him up. If it isn't an emergency, it's ... what?

So he does the only thing he can, and says he'll be right there.

He isn't sure what to expect when he walks into Colonel Patel's office and sees her dressed up in her Sunday go to Meeting best, and she smiles at him in a way that doesn't tell him anything and then starts shoveling moonshine ninety to the dozen. To hear her tell it, she's working on some translation, and the artifacts she needs to consult are here, and she finished up in Washington early, which at least tells him what she's been up to—if it's true—but not why she's here.

He has ideas of his own on that front, and he doesn't like them very much. Vala's here, and he'll acquit Little Miss of being out to do cold-blooded murder, but not of coming here to try to get information. And they can't let her do that. So he stands there with his best bland noncommittal expression on his face while Colonel Patel offers her the keys to the kingdom.

And that's when it occurs to the man to mention in an oh-by-the-way fashion that they defrosted the guy in the stasis field yesterday and he's already learned English. Isn't that convenient?

And then the Colonel beams at her like he's about to offer her a cookie, and adds: "And you were right after all, Dr. Jackson. His name's Khalek."

#

"You turned off the stasis field." She can't quite make it into a question, but her voice is steady, thank fuck. Colonel Patel is going on about how careful they'd been, citing her report as if they'd just been following her suggestions, talking about sterile containment and hazmat suits and every possible precaution. And none of that changes the fact that Khalek, Anubis's lab-rat is out and around, walking and talking.

Speaking English.

It's not unreasonable. Most of the people they meet on the other side of the Gate speak English (one of the galaxy's great unsolved mysteries), but it seems wrong that Khalek should. (She's thinking of Ayiana, of the woman who died in the Antarctic ice long before the dawn of humanity, and lived again, briefly, without the language to tell them her history.) Khalek isn't an Ancient, then. But no. The Colonel said Khalek _learned_ English. In a day. (Ayiana lived for a week; she had a few words of English by the end. Not enough to tell them her story.)

"I'd love to see him," she says. (Colonel Patel's stopped talking, so at least she isn't interrupting him, but she doesn't even have the faintest idea of what he's said.)

"Maybe we can help each other, then, Dr. Jackson. He's saying he wants to go home, and we're not sure where that is."

"I'll be happy to do what I can," she says (that's always been true, though the context varies). She gets to her feet. "Why don't I go and talk to...?" _Khalek,_ she wants to say, but the Colonel will want her to talk to whoever is the lead researcher first. There's a sound behind her, and suddenly she remembers Cam's in the room. "Maybe Colonel Mitchell could come with me?"

She knows she didn't come here for Khalek. She didn't know about Khalek until five minutes ago. But this is so big, so important, that the world is suddenly (temporarily?) cloven into 'before' and 'after'.

'Before' is so distant she can't entirely remember what was there.

Of course Colonel Patel says yes (she doesn't look at Cam; she can't), and says he'll have his aide take them over to the project lab. He'll let Dr. Hawwash know she's coming.

"You did not come here for that," Cam says (low, for her ears alone) as they're leaving.

"They thawed him out," she says. It isn't an answer. It's all she has.

#

Dr. Saeed (ibn) Dawoud (ibn) Irmiyah al-Hawwash (the _nasab_ prefixes are no longer expressed, but implied) is the head of what they're calling, with a stunning lack of originality, Project Khalek. His field is biology. Xenobiology, really. His office is air conditioned to the point of hypothermia. Behind his desk there's a large window that opens into another room. The floor is another level below (it reminds her vaguely of the briefing room at the SGC), so from this angle, she has a good view of a wall and not much else. He's delighted to meet her (he seems as if he's prepared to be delighted by everything, actually), and looks forward (he says) to working with her.

"We've already made so much progress," Dr. Hawwash says. "He's really a very remarkable young man. Not, you know, entirely human," he adds gleefully, lowering his voice as if imparting a secret.

(She'd really like to ask him why the _fuck_ they decided to thaw out somebody they found in a _Goa'uld_ lab, but she can't figure out any way to do it that doesn't involve screaming.)

"Most of the people we've found out there originally came from Earth," she points out neutrally (sometimes stating the obvious is the best way to get more information). They've met very few who aren't: the Nox, the Unas, the Serrakin, a handful of others. (The _Goa'uld_ themselves, of course.) But for more (probably far more) than ten thousand years, the _Goa'uld_ have been populating the galaxy with transplanted _Tau'ri_ : people, animals, entire ecologies. It implies a galaxy so empty of other life as to be haunted.

"That was what we initially assumed, Dr. Jackson. I mean—just look at him! He wouldn't be out of place anywhere on Earth. Amazing. But, naturally, while he was still in quarantine, we did a full genetic workup on him; we'd hoped the data could be used for the Genome Diaspora Project. Of course, it's useless if we can't find his home. But in the process, we discovered a significant number of physiological similarities to the Ancient baseline we've developed."

Ayiana's body was sent here after she died.

"Genetic drift?" she asks. She thinks of Cassie, of Hanka, of the mindfire virus that nearly killed her. Nirrti had been breeding the Hankans for generations. Pelops had done the same on Argos.

"It's possible," Dr. Hawwash says reluctantly. "But his results are so very similar to the White Rock Sample--"

"Her name was Ayiana," Dani says sharply. An Ancient. A Gatebuilder. The Gatebuilders are their ancestors: a race thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of years older than the humanity which has always believed itself to be the first evolution of intelligent life on Earth. But the Gatebuilders were here first, and humanity carries their genes. Did they lift Dani's ancient proto-hominid ancestors toward sapience in some antediluvian laboratory? Or was their intercession more carnal?

Her mind is wandering. Stress. Exhaustion. She hasn't slept since she left DC. She wonders what funerary rites the Ancients practiced. She wonders how much of Ayiana's body is left, and where it is. (She will not think of Jack.)

"Yes, of course," Dr. Hawwash says uncomfortably. "Ayiana."

"I'm sorry," Dani says. "I suppose 'White Rock Sample' probably looks better on the reports."

He smiles. Relieved. Willing to acknowledge the joke, the implicit apology.

"But Ayiana was more than three million years old," Dani continues. "And as far as we know, her people have been gone a very long time. How can she and Khalek be ... related?"

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" Dr. Hawwash says. He presses a button on his desk. "David, Dr. Jackson's arrived. Why don't you bring Khalek up? There are some people here I think he'd like to meet."

"You're letting him wander around loose?" she asks. 

It comes out as more of an accusation than she'd meant it to. Dr. Hawwash frowns again. (She's usually a little better at charming scientists than this; what's wrong with her today?) "This _is_ a secure facility, Dr. Jackson," he says reprovingly. "And it's clear from what he's told us so far, that poor Khalek is an innocent victim of... atrocity."

She thinks of the torture chamber in Anubis's lab. She wants to ask more questions, to find out what Khalek has already told them, but the door beside the observation window is opening, and two men are stepping through the door. The one in the rear is wearing a white lab coat—David Woods. She remembers him from White Rock. He's following a man wearing a plain olive coverall. Khalek.

He's tall. He looks very young.

"You wanted to see me, Doctor Hawwas?" he asks. His voice is soft, diffident. His English is accentless. Flawless.

"Yes. Khalek, these people are Dr. Danielle Jackson and Colonel Cameron Mitchell of Stargate Command. They're the ones who rescued you. I believe you both already know Dr. Woods?"

"Dr. Jackson does. I haven't had the pleasure." She startles at the sound; she's managed to forget Cam is here again. (But she came here for Cam.)

"Good to see you again, David," Dani says. (My turn to curtsey, your turn to bow.) He's shaved off the scruffy beard he had in Antarctica, but he's still wearing the same pale pink glasses (the protective plumage of the alpha geek). She remembers him as dour, confrontational, but now he seems nearly as giddy as Dr. Hawwas. Strange.

"Dani. Colonel," David says. Content to take a backseat in this, clearly, but he knows he isn't the star attraction here. How could he be?

Khalek is looking directly at her. Without the barrier of the pseudo-ice from the stasis chamber she can see him clearly for the first time: his skin is fair, his hair a pale blond. His eyes were closed when he was in stasis: they're a bright pale blue. (Blond hair is a genetic mutation; it first appeared on Earth about 11,000 years ago, around the same time blue eyes did.) "Then I have you to thank for saving me," he says. His smile has a childlike sweetness. "I am in your debt."

"We couldn't just leave you there," she says. "Can you tell us what happened to you? Where did you come from?"

"We called it... 'home'," he says, with a wistful smile. "I don't... I don't remember..."

"That's all right," Dr. Hawwas says quickly. He gets to his feet and eases Khalek into a chair. Khalek still seems to be a little weak. "There's plenty of time for you to remember."

"But I want to go home!" Khalek says, and there's despair in his voice now. He looks at her beseechingly. Urgently. "Can you send me home?" he pleads.

_Home._ She thinks of Abydos, gone in fire. Of Anubis. So many dead. All for nothing. "I'll do my best," she says. "I promise."

His answering smile makes her think of sunlight and innocence. But there's something wrong here. She pushes the thought down into the depths of her mind. The only thing here that isn't right is her.

"They didn't tell us you were coming, Dani," David says. "I'm afraid we really don't have much to show you."

"I didn't think you'd have anything to show me," she answers. "I'm still working on the translation of the material in the lab. I wanted to get another look at the original artifacts." (Fortunately they're both biologists, because the only artifact she could actually reasonably be interested in is the material from the computer database, and she has a full copy of that on her laptop.)

David glances at Hawwash for approval (well, he's in charge, after all). "I don't see why you shouldn't," Dr. Hawwash says. "We'll give you the tour, and you can let us know what you're particularly interested in. Anything you can do to help Khalek will be greatly appreciated by everyone here."

"I need to get to the Stargate," Khalek says, raising his head. "I want to go home."

"I know," Dani says. "But it's at ... another facility. It's going to take a little time." And won't the NID be pleased to discover they're losing part of their treasure trove? The NID has never been really clear on the distinction between people and objects.

"I know," Khalek answers. "I trust you, Dani."

She keeps herself from frowning. He heard David use her name, of course. But something seems a little... off.

#

Khalek is leaning on Dr. Hawwas as they go down the stairs into the lab. She's about to follow, but Cam puts a hand on her arm, holding her back.

"'Finished up early in Washington?'" he says.

Anger, accusation, he's so shut down right now she can't get a good read on him. She can't tell him what Sammy said, because the reason she's here is in what Sammy didn't say, and she still doesn't know how to put that into words. "Sammy said there was an accident," she finally says, because that's a kind of truth, but not the truth she owes him. (She's not sure what the truth is, right now.)

His expression was closed off before; now his face goes completely blank. The smile, when it comes, is as false as a lie. "Aw, shoot, you came all the way out here for that? Wasn't even a scratch."

_But you aren't all right, Cam._ She wants to say it, but there's no time. The others will wonder where they are.

"Come on," she says. "They're waiting."

#

Khalek seems to have recovered by the time they reach the bottom of the stairs. He steps away from Dr. Hawwas. The lab for Project Khalek is about the size of an airplane hangar (maybe it was an airplane hangar once). There's a catwalk that seems to go all the way around, but she can't see any other staircases. Everything's out in the open. There are a few makeshift cubicles defined by portable walls, but a lot of the space is open, taken up by lab benches interspersed with large-scale analytical equipment. Clearly they aren't worried about anything blowing up. She sees an MRI, an X-Ray machine, and something that looks like a washing machine with delusions of grandeur (it's a Mass Spectrometer; she's always fighting P&E for time on the ones at the SGC).

"Don’t trip," David says. She looks down. The floor is covered with thick black power cables. It looks like a nest of snakes. She steps carefully among them (it would be easier if she weren't in heels), following Khalek and Dr. Hawwas. Khalek is looking around himself curiously. She wonders if he's been in this section before. There are technicians everywhere, laptops open and standalone monitors running inscrutable displays. It would all make sense to her, Dani thinks, if only she were Sammy. But she doesn't need Sammy to recognize what she's being led toward.

"Dr. Guadarrama, this is Dr. Jackson from Stargate Command. She's doing followup research on the artifacts her team brought back from, ah..."

"P3X-584," she offers, and Dr. Hawwas smiles. (Clearly he can't be bothered to keep track of planetary algorithms. Maybe they should just call it Planet White Rock?)

A white-haired man in the lab coat turns toward them. She recognizes the name (from the reports she skims and never has time to read). He's a xenoengineering specialist. Area 51 does a lively business (so she's heard) in backengineering alien technology so it can be duplicated here on Earth, but she doesn't know most of the details (isn't supposed to know them, and if she'd understood, back in the beginning, the alchemy by which the straws they clutched at in the defense of Earth were spun to gold for American business would she have walked away from the Program?) What's clear enough is that in the six weeks or so since the loot from P3X-584 was shipped to Area 51, Project Khalek has gotten off to a good (if disturbing) start. Disturbing, because the main thing they removed from 584 (besides Khalek) was another Ancient DNA resequencer. A panel on the base is open, and one of the heavy black cables seems to be plugged in to it someone.

"This seems to be a far more advanced version of the device you brought back the remains of from P3X-367." He seems rather cross (it's a nice change), but then, most of the research staff here seem to think the Teams deliberately break all of the wonderful alien technology they find before it gets here. (In the case of Nirrti's machine, he's right.)

"It's a pleasure to get to study an intact example," he goes on. "It seems to be designed to be used with this device." He gestures toward a table. There's a black box that bears a vague resemblance to a TiVO box. "It's apparently meant to monitor the subject's state and feed information back to the resequencer. It minimizes the chance of lethal mutation. We're hoping to start running trials next year. For now, we've removed the power crystals and rerouted the relays so we can test it at minimal power."

She must look as horrified as she feels, because he goes on to assure her (hastily) that they won't be mutating anything more evolved than fruit flies. Cam says something about somebody named Jeff Goldblum, and Dr. Guadarrama looks blank.

"Hey," Cam says. "It's a benchmark in American cinema. And it had a sequel! Now, normally they say that it's a bad idea to do a remake, but I'm here to tell you that this just beats the pants off the original--"

It's a great act. It's just the sort of thing Cam _would_ say. Has said, in fact, on innumerable (maddening) occasions. But today it's an act. It's Cam imitating Cam, playing to the gallery, and she has the sudden unworthy thought that maybe it's _all_ been an act. A performance. A lie. Everything he's been and done since the day he came to Stargate Command. (Everything they've been together.)

Khalek is utterly focused on the resequencer. He looks as if he's going to step up onto the platform in another moment. She's pretty sure that's a bad idea, even if it isn't working. (There's something wrong in all this, and she doesn't know what. Only that there is.) She needs to get him out of here. (She needs to find out what Dr. Hawwash asked him, and what he said.)

"Look, I'm pretty sure you don't want to see all this stuff again," she says. 

Khalek turns toward her so quickly she takes a step back. For a moment his face is blank, then he smiles.

"I don't mind," he says quietly.

(That's wrong. It's the first thing she's been sure of. If he was tortured in that lab—Dr. Hawwash says he was—the last thing he should want is to see the equipment again.)

"Was this device used on you?" she asks. ( _Mashur-nat_. Mutated from what, to what? Khalek, or a predecessor? She remembers the torture chamber on 584; she remembers standing on the resequencer platform as Nirrti unmade her, but Nirrti threw away her toys after she broke them, she didn't put them into stasis.) He looks so frail. Why isn't he in a bed somewhere?

"I don't remember," he whispers. "I'm sorry, Dani."

"It's all right," she says. "Dr. Guadarrama, great to meet you. I'm afraid this is more Colonel Carter's field than it is mine..." She smiles at him conciliatingly (most engineers don't think archaeology is a real science), and turns back to Khalek. The back of her mind is screaming at her: _something wrong, something wrong_ and she doesn't know what it is. (Earth is supposed to be a safe place. Ha and also ha.) "Khalek, I know we're going to be a while," (brisk, firm, assumption of command), "and you're still recovering from being revived. Why don't you get a little rest? When I'm done here, we can go over what you can tell me about locating homeworld." (And she can have a lovely chat with General Landry about sending him home.) She gives Dr. Hawwas a firm glare. _Get him out of here so I can talk to you._

"Yes, of course," he says. "David can show you to Khalek's quarters."

#

She'd thought Khalek's quarters might be in another building (yeah, like wherever they're keeping _Vala_ ). Someplace secure. He's been acquitted of being a potential plague carrier; there's no reason to keep him in the lab now, but that doesn't change the fact that he's an offworlder of unknown origin, and being a victim of Anubis doesn't automatically make him their ally (she thinks of Kelowna). But the space David shows them to (her and Cam and Khalek; a small parade) is inside the lab. Clearly makeshift: a ceilingless cubicle, an afterthought to the giant fishtank that still holds the stasis chamber. (BSL-4, it stretches all along the wall. They're at the back end. It's so brightly-lit inside that the stasis chamber still inside it looks like a museum exhibit.) The walls are solid, and there's even a regular door, but the walls don't go all the way up. There's no privacy (and no security if they want to keep him in, a part of her mind whispers). Inside it's stark, spartan, windowless, and still full of medical equipment. There's an open toilet in one corner, and a sink, like a prison cell, but most of the space is taken up by the hospital bed and the chair beside it. (There's a television mounted to the wall. She wonders if Khalek has seen television yet.)

"We moved him in here as soon as we had the preliminary results," David says. "We wanted to minimize potential exposure. You know, in case we'd missed something."

Cam clears his throat slightly. "I'm sure you wouldn't have taken him out of the Tupperware if he had the plague," he says mildly.

(Maybe they would have. David was exposed and survived. He's immune now. She wonders if they've developed a vaccine. Probably not, or somebody would have stuck her with it by now.)

"I'd say they'll find you better quarters soon," she says to Khalek. "But I know you hope to leave as soon as you can." She helps him lie down on top of the covers. The bed is very neat. She wonders who made it up.

He takes her hand. His fingers are cool and dry, but the contact is still electrifying. "Do you promise?" he asks. "You'll come back?"

"Of course I'll come back, Khalek," she says.

When she turns away, Cam is standing in the doorway, watching both of them.

#

"Guess I'll get back to my desk," Cam says, as they leave the medical section.

"I thought they brought you down here to train people." The words are out before she thinks. They're the wrong words. She doesn't know why.

"Best of the best," Cam says. "Not much I can teach 'em. You need to find me for anything, ask Major Pacheco. He's General Dietrich's XO." He smiles a little, distant and wistful. "And if you see a guy named Armstrong, run. Cousin Vinnie's the NID guy."

(False, all false, in presentation if not in content; Cam doesn't want her here, doesn't want her to see ... something. And whatever it is, it's what she's come here to see.)

"Are you sure you don't want to stay, Colonel?" David asks. "We'd be grateful for your input."

"I'd just get underfoot," Cam answers. "'Sides, I've already seen the elephant."

The three of them go back up to Dr. Hawwash's office; David is escorting Cam out. Her briefcase and laptop are here. Good. She needs them. Something isn't right (something _else_ isn't right), and the answer might be in the records Anubis kept. 

"I thought you'd be more excited about this, Dani," David says, shutting the door to the lab behind them. "If Khalek isn't an Ancient, he's close."

"How close?" Cam asks.

"Well, the EEG we ran on him initially indicated synaptic activity of nearly seventy percent. A normal human brain, you or I say, should show roughly five to ten percent coverage," David says.

"We're pretty sure the Ancients used a lot more of their brains than we do," she says absently. _Ancient brain structure could handle the download from a Repository. Ours can't._ She sits down in Dr. Hawwash's chair and pulls out her briefcase. (She thought Cam was leaving, but apparently now he wants to chat.) Her notes are here, along with some of the photos of the computer data from 584. "I think I've cracked the code on the database," she says (explaining why she's apparently setting up camp here). "David, what exactly has Khalek told you?" Ah, here they are.

"You cracked it?" Cam asks sharply.

"Yeah, I had an idea on the drive here." (Ancient symbols to phonetic equivalents to _Goa'uld_ and then to English. It won't be exact, but it will be an improvement on... nothing.)

"Not much," David says. "His name. That he was being held prisoner. Experimented on. He said he didn't know who his captor was. We told him it was a _Goa'uld_ named Anubis. Dr. Hawwash said he didn't have to worry, because Anubis is dead now."

"Sure he is," Cam says agreeably.

"Maybe there are some clues here," David says. "Why don't you bring--"

"Call Security," she says. _"Now."_

Cam is moving toward the red phone by the outer door. David is staring at her.

"Khalek's a clone of Anubis." Not entirely, not exactly. Close enough to kick her faint feeling of unease into full-blown panic, because Khalek has been lying to all of them. (The _Goa'uld_ do a lot of experimenting on humans, and they have a form of cloning. Those words she knows. They leap out at her from the jumble of alien letters: Clone. Selection. Advanced. Soldier. Weapon.)

"Dani, are you _sure_?"

"No!" she says. "Not without more time-- Tests --"

"We need to get those people out of there before we bring in security," Cam says. "How many on the project?"

"Thirty-five, but..."

"They all here right now?"

"Well, I'm not sure--"

"This is Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell." Cam's picked up the phone now. "I need a security team over to Dr. Hawwash's office on the double--"

David starts to go back down to the lab. She grabs him.

"Where are you going?" she demands.

"To tell Dr. Hawwash that you've lost your mind," he says.

"Which part of _clone of Anubis_ do you not understand?"

"You said yourself--"

"No, I _don't_ have an authorization code!" That's Cam. "I am TDY from Area 52, and we have a _situation_ here--"

Suddenly the lights flicker. A moment later they go out entirely.

"What's going on?" she demands.

"That shouldn't be happening," David says. (Which doesn't tell her what it _is_.)

There's light coming through the window. A faint glow. She rushes over to it. The whole lab is dark, except for eldritch glow of laptops running on battery power and the column of light coming from behind one of the partitions. She thinks it's the sequencer.

( _Mashur-nat._ Mutation. _Hok'taur._ Khalek.)

Neither she nor Cam is armed.

"What's going on?" David demands. He's moved up behind her.

"Is there another way out of the lab?" she demands.

"The south staircase and the freight tunnel on the north side. But if the power's out, the locks--"

"Stay here!" she says. She has to do something. Stop this. Get the people out. Give Cam the time to call for help.

She hears Cam shout after her as she yanks open the door and plunges into the darkness beyond.

#

As a plan, this sucks. If she lives through this, she'll admit it to anyone who asks. But in the first place, this isn't a hardened underground site with six checkpoints and a blast door between trouble and the surface. And in the second place, the security and response teams here aren't used to dealing with _insane homicidal aliens._

At least she can buy them some time.

She really wishes she had a gun.

She can hear voices—shout, babble, yelp—as she runs. Not panic. Not yet. Random flashlight beams shine upward, crossing like searchlights (because obviously the problem is on the ceiling).

She trips over a cable. Falls, sprawls, rolls, kicks off her shoes. Having to save the world in a skirt seems like the last straw, somehow. She crouches, pulling off her blazer as she tries to get her bearings. The fall has jarred loose her mental map of the lab, but her eyes have adjusted, and the laptops help. There's almost enough light to see by.

There's a scream (loud enough to hear over the gabble of rhetorical questions) and a crash, and suddenly it's brighter. She can see the resequencer now; the partitions between her and it have been knocked over. There's someone standing on it, wrapped in spirals of brilliant light. (Three guesses.) People are moving toward it, disembodied wraiths in brilliantly-illuminated lab coats. She wants to warn them away (do not touch the alien death-ray while it is running), but they'd never hear her over the other noise.

She's about to get to her feet. Unquestioned instinct makes herself throw herself flat instead.

It isn't an explosion. There's a moment while she wonders where the bang is, wonders why the air is ruffling her hair, then there's sound. Crashing, thumping, banging. Not the flat thunderclap of detonation but the sound (comprehension edited into the moment in retrospect), of everything moveable being hurled ... away. 

She raises her head cautiously.

"Dani. You said you'd come back. How nice." The diffident shyness is gone from his voice now. The tone is almost familiar.

She gets to her knees, then to her feet. "I said I would, Khalek."

She steps forward, cautiously. Light spirals around his body. Bright words in a language she cannot read.

"It's almost a shame you guessed," he says. "But perhaps it's better this way. More satisfying, certainly."

There aren't any answers she wants, but she asks the question anyway. "Why is it more satisfying?"

She sees him smile. "Now I can ask you what you felt when you saw what my father did to Abydos."

For an instant, all she can see is the image of a planet webbed in fire. She takes a deep breath. "You can read my mind," she says evenly. "You already know."

The Ancients had abilities their human descendants do not. Telepathy. Telekinesis. Healing. (She doesn't think Khalek is interested in healing anyone.)

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. "Yessssss... What a smart girl you are, Dani."

"Everyone says so." She ought to be feeling terror. Grief. Rage. But all she feels is a faint pleased triumph in identifying who he sounds like. Simon. He sounds like Simon when he was still host to Osiris.

"You're thinking _Cam_ will rescue you," Khalek says. She sees him smile in the brilliant glare of the resquencer. "He won't. Shall I bring him down here? You can watch him die. He loves you, you know."

_I know. I've known for a long time._ "Maybe later. Tell me about Anubis."

"My father. My brother. My mother. Lord of the Hallowed Land, Foremost of the Westerners, Governor of the Divine House, He Who Dwells upon the Mountain--"

"We've met."

Wrong answer. Nothing new there.

"Then why don't you kneel before your god?" She's wrenched to her knees. She catches herself on her hands, but she can't get to her feet, even though she tries. The cables on the floor dig in to her shins painfully. Khalek steps down off the platform. The light fades. She's alone in the dark with Death, and a tiny antic part of her mind tells her this can't possibly end well for anyone.

"You've been afraid for so long you hardly notice any more," Khalek says. "What a shame."

She raises her head. At least she can do that much. Her mouth tastes of metal. Her heart is beating so hard it's difficult to breathe, so loud she can't hear any sounds he might be making as he moves. "You were born in that lab. Why ask to go home?"

Out of the darkness, he touches her cheek. She flinches back with a startled cry, but before she can try again to move, he's lifting her to her feet.

"But I didn't want to go back to the lab, Dani. You were going to discover my home was Dakara. And you were going to send me there." He's leaning close, whispering in her ear. "You still can."

"What's on Dakara?" The question is a reflex. She doesn't think she's going to live to use what she's learned.

"Treasure," Khalek answers gloatingly. "The legacy of the Ancients. They used it to create life. Anubis will use it to create death." He releases her and steps away. She staggers, keeping her balance only with effort. The darkness is disorienting. Her body aches, a background song of damage.

There's a faint echoing clicking, and now there's light. It's nothing Khalek did; the emergency lighting has come on, a cryptic message from a world where people are still alive. It's faint and green. A lot of the lamps are broken. It's enough light to show her the whole contents of the lab, jumbled and broken against the walls like flotsam. Not enough light to distinguish bodies. She breathes deeply. Slowly. She'd never thought it was possible to faint from sheer terror (the lessons of Ra), but she's starting to rethink her position. 

"You want me dead," he says, as if it's just occurred to him. "Killing... it is the sweetest pleasure in all my memories. No wonder you seek it. I yearn to add the--" He breaks off. "No!" he shouts. "They can't! I won't let them!" He's suddenly furious, and she doesn't know why. What does he know that she doesn't? (Too many things.)

She'd run, but there's no point. To get to either of the staircases she'd have to climb the wreckage; he'd catch her long before she reached either one. She still backs away.

Something's rumbling. What? There's a grinding roar, the thrum of an engine.

"Hey there." It's Cam's voice, amplified to the point of distortion, echoing off the metal walls. She wants to cover her ears. "You guys having a good time in here?"

Cam is in (on?) a tank. He's wearing a helmet and a flak vest and sitting behind a very large gun. The tank rolls slowly into the room, pushing away some of the debris, grinding the smaller pieces under its treads. She supposes (giddily) that it isn't a very large tank, but it seems urgent that she understand how it got here ( _"--the freight tunnel on the north side--"_ ) but all things considered, she thinks it's more important for Cam to just _open fire._

"Bring them back!" Khalek screams.

"On their way to Finland," Cam answers, and even through the distortion his voice is cheerful. "You want outta here, you're gonna have to walk."

Finland. _"Training accident in Finland..."_ Cam's sent the 302s away and there's nothing else here that can take Khalek to a Stargate. The only ship they have is--

She tries to force the memory away, but it's too late. Khalek laughs. "Clever girl," he says approvingly, and she figures she might as well run now, so she does.

It does her as much good as she thought it would. She's plucked off her feet (she thinks of the ribbon device; it's an oddly familiar sensation) and slammed to the ground in front of Khalek. It hurts.

"You won't shoot me, _Cam,_ " Khalek says. "You'll hit her."

"Sorry," Cam says. And opens fire. The sound is deafening, a blurt of noise that makes her curl up instinctively, closing her eyes.

Then it stops. She looks up, sees bullets hanging impossibly (an overused and inapplicable word, considering her life) frozen in the air. She barely has time to register the basics (alive, bullets hovering) before Khalek lets them go. They click as they hit the ground. She doesn't even have time to decide what she ought to feel (regret? indignation?) before the tank flies across the room. Hits the opposite wall. It doesn't explode.

She pushes her glasses back into place and gets slowly to her feet (yet again). She doesn't want to die kneeling at anyone's feet, though in the final analysis, dead is dead and the position probably doesn't matter.

"Come along, Dani," Khalek says. "I'm going to show you the stars."

He takes her arm and starts walking toward the tunnel.

#

Once upon a time (it's the way all fairytales, myths, and nightmares start) there was a man named Jack O'Neill. And the Asgard said (once upon a time) that Jack was a harbinger of the Fifth Race, and maybe that's why he survived two downloads of the Ancient Repository into his brain. Anubis was coming to Earth, and they needed some way to fight him, and the weapon they needed (they thought) was on a planet they couldn't reach by Stargate. The little scout ship they borrowed wasn't fast enough to make the trip before the Ancient knowledge killed him (it wasn't what he died of in the end, now there's a joke suitable to the occasion), so he modified it as the knowledge of the Ancients unspooled in his brain, and they flew it to Proclarush Taonas where (like Dorothy) they discovered the answer was in their own backyard all along. So they flew it home again, and it's been here at Area 51 ever since.

They exit the tunnel. The ground is hot under her bare feet. The sunlight is blinding. Khalek isn't running (why bother?), just walking briskly toward the hangar where the _tel'tak_ is. She stumbles along beside him, shaking her head over and over, trying to make everything come real, make sense, because there's nobody in sight anywhere. Shouldn't there be jeeps and tanks and people? Sirens going off? Something?

"I suppose he didn't love you after all," Khalek says. "He shot you. He would have killed you if I hadn't saved you. You should be grateful, but I suppose you aren't. Ba'al's on Dakara, you know. It's his throneworld."

"That's nice," she says politely. _Try to keep up._ Her own voice in memory. Who did she say that to? She's sorry now, she thinks. Too bad she won't get a chance to apologize. To whoever it was.

"I'm going to give you to him." Khalek might as well be discussing the weather. It's a lovely day here at Area 51. Still warm and bright, even in November. "It will distract him."

"While you blow up the universe?"

"I will remake it in my father's image," Khalek answers. "And mine."

They're here. She blinks, dazed, at the gleaming golden bulk of the ship inside the hangar bay. She doesn't remember coming in here. (She's in shock. What a surprise.) The concrete is cool under her feet.

"Open it," Khalek says.

The hatch is closed. But it shouldn't be closed. They locked the hatch open when they brought it here because the ship is keyed to them, the four of them, and only three are left... (The access permissions can be changed, but they haven't been yet. She doesn't know if it's because of a turf war or because they don't know how.)

The scuff of footsteps on concrete. Movement in the shadows. Khalek turns, pulling her with him, and a Kull Warrior appears. Its black armor glitters even in the diffuse sunlight. It raises its hand, and the beam of the ribbon device in its armor catches Khalek full in the face. The ribbon device is powered by will, activated by _naquadaah_ in the blood. They've never managed to figure out what it does (aside from whatever its wielder wants), but they can add to its list of abilities "total paralyzation of deranged mutant _hok'taur_ " because Khalek isn't even fighting back. His arms drop to his sides. She's free. 

The Kull walks slowly forward, and the sharp barbeque smell of roasting meat fills the air. She looks around for a weapon. Something. She moves around to the other side of the ship, away from the Kull Warrior and the high terrible ringing of the ribbon device. There's a wall of equipment, powered down. A desk. A chair. An empty coffee cup. A telephone. She could call for help, but who? And what would she say?

(She looks for a toolbox. Screwdriver, wrench, crowbar, anything she can use as a weapon. Nothing.)

Gunshots ring out over the sound of the ribbon device. She crouches under the desk, reflexively going for cover and trying to see at the same time, but the ship blocks her angle of view.

The sound of the ribbon device stops.

"Where is she?" Cam's voice, hoarse and breathless, and she scrambles out from under the desk so fast she hits her head. After having been thrown around so many times, the impact barely registers.

"How should I know, darling?" It's Vala's voice. "Is he dead? You should be more careful. You could've shot me, you know."

"I emptied the clip." Cam again (implied answer to Vala's question). "And you're wearing armor. Where is she?"

"Here," she says.

Vala is standing hipshot, the Kull helmet under her arm, shaking her hair out. Cam is facing her, a few feet away, still in a shooter's crouch. Khalek is lying on the ground between them, face down. His head is a ruin of red and white and grey. Blood pools on the ground.

Cam turns toward her. He's bloody and bruised. But he's alive. "Are you okay?"

"You let Vala out." Maybe he hasn't noticed? Unlikely.

"We have a deal," Vala says, her voice sharp and edgy.

"I'm going to need you to open the ship now, Dani," Cam says, his voice level.

She'd like to think she doesn't know what's going on, but suddenly it's very clear. Cam sent the 302s away so Khalek couldn't use them. Sent everyone way (by some miraculous feat of SG-1 alchemy). Let Vala out of prison. Found a tank.

"How did you know I'd tell him it was here?" she says.

"That was luck," Cam says evenly. "If you hadn't, I would've. The hatch, Dani."

"You're going to let her go. In our ship."

"Well, from what _I_ heard, you stole it from the Jaffa," Vala says.

"She just saved Earth." Cam takes a step toward her. Dani takes a step back.

"And we made a deal!" Vala says, louder now. "I kill the _mashur-nat_ , you let me go." Vala glares at Cam, or maybe at both of them. "You promised."

" _I_ didn't promise," Dani says quietly. But Cam is looking at her. They've always kept each other's promises. Not just her and Cam, but all of SG-1. _Know you well that I shall be with you in all things whatsoever you do in my name and that I shall never forsake you nor your brethren..._ Vala helped kill Khalek, and saved Earth, and Khalek was Anubis, and Anubis killed Abydos. Is it enough? What scales do you weigh the destinies of two planets in? All those people? All those futures?

She's made a promise through the commutation of shared identity. _We few, we happy few, we band of brothers..._ She takes a deep breath and walks past Cam toward the hatch of the ship. Stops. Vala is standing in front of the hatch. Dani is standing beside it.

"You're Ba'al's agent," she says. "You spied on us and you gave him what you learned." Vala's eyes flicker, and suddenly Dani has the rest of the puzzle that began before Galar, before Felger, that began when Oshu came to the SGC... "But you passed information to Yu's agents in Ba'al's court. That's how Oshu knew about Tartarus. But Ba'al never knew who the double agent was. Who are you really working for?" Not Ba'al. Not Anubis. And certainly not Yu, circumstantial evidence to the contrary. Who does that leave?

"You _Tau'ri_ think there are only two sides to every problem," Vala says flatly.

"Not any more."

It's hard to press her hand against the lock to open the door. But she's done harder things. She doesn't know if she's doing this for Oshu, or for Cam, or for herself. If she forgives Vala, or if she's finally realized forgiveness—redemption—is impossible. But the hatch rolls open. Behind her she hears Cam exhale sharply. 

Vala moves forward. Dani puts out a hand, and she stops. Dani knows how strong Vala is, and the armor makes her stronger. She could brush past her easily. She doesn't. Her face is expressionless.

"Ba'al's throneworld is a place called Dakara," Dani says. "Khalek told me. There's something there Anubis wants."

"What?" Vala asks.

"A weapon. The ultimate weapon. Something that will erase all life, everywhere. If Anubis is still out there, that's where he's going."

She's managed to surprise Vala. That's the one triumph of her day.

"Thank you."

Dani steps back. Vala walks into the ship.

Cam puts an arm around her. The ship rises from the ground in an eerie silence and ghosts smoothly from the hangar into the sky. _When the ship sails, all debts are paid._

Khalek's body is all that's left.

#

Every near-miss Apocalypse involves debriefing. (And lying. And sometimes threats of criminal charges.) She has a mild concussion, and some blood chemistry anomalies (so they say). Cam has a less-mild concussion and a cracked collarbone.

Six of the people who were in the lab today survived, not counting her.

She's in the infirmary, under guard. She's visited by General Dietrich, Major Pacheco, Colonel Patel, and Mr. Armstrong. (All of them want to know what happened; Armstrong asks the most rhetorical questions.) Her story is simple. She believed she'd cracked the code in Anubis's lab (which she had, but they won't let her finish the translation now, even though her computer and notes survived). She came out here to check her findings. She wanted to see Cam while she was here. He's her Team Leader. Khalek happened. (A lot of things happened. She wonders if Cam knew—or guessed—that shooting Khalek wouldn't work. If he could pull the trigger and she'd survive. It doesn't really matter, she decides. He will use her and she will use him until one or both of them is gone. Earth is too important for anything less.)

She leans heavily on her injuries to get out of giving detailed answers. Even General Landry wouldn't fall for the act (mass murder and the narrowly-averted destruction of Earth; just another day for the SGC), but these people don't work with the Teams. They think she's an ordinary civilian.

They think she's normal.

#

He got to be in charge of Area 51 for fifteen whole minutes today. Ordered a General around. (Something for which he has General Landry and General Hammond to thank, and he is duly grateful. When Little Miss did her suicide charge, it was more than time to stop fooling around with the local talent and call in the big guns.) He doesn't know what General Hammond said to General Dietrich, but it was enough. Scrambled the rolling stock, pulled everyone back to the perimeter. (Further, if they were smart: Cam ordered an airstrike on the lab for T-plus-60, because if the plan hadn't worked by then, it wasn't going to.)

He's damned glad he spent the last eighteen months reading old mission reports. It was enough to let him guess that "Ancient DNA" and "clone of Anubis" translated to "wacky superpowers". He bet deep and rolled the dice.

He sat in the cockpit of an M113 and pointed an M2 at Dani and pulled the trigger.

Not as big a gamble as he took when he stood in that hangar and asked her to open the ship and let Vala go. But she didn't come here for Vala. He knows that now. She came for him, and that's something he doesn't want to think about. Doesn't want her to think he needs her, not like that, because he knows the only card he has to play with her (has ever had) is invincibility. _See the amazing Colonel Cameron Mitchell! He laughs in the face of danger! He snickers at disaster! He guffaws at mortal peril! See him bounce back from catastrophes that would stagger lesser men..._

It's the only gift he has to give her.

"Hey, Cam."

Sam is standing in the doorway. He motions her in, trying not to wince. Getting tossed ass over teakettle wasn't any picnic, even in an APC. "How you doing? How's Dani?"

He's got a private room. They haven't let him see her. The nurses keep saying she's "fine", which is nursespeak for "we aren't going to tell you, Colonel".

"A couple of bumps and bruises." Sam sits down beside the bed. "Not too bad. Teal'c's staying with her. General Landry's here. So is Richard Woolsey. We hitched a ride."

"How much trouble am I in?" Could be a free pass. Could be a court-martial. Either way, it means getting out of here, and he wishes it didn't make him feel as relieved as it does.

Sam shrugs. "There's no doubt Khalek was a serious threat. They're still pulling bodies out of the wreckage." She smiles, bright and bitter. "Armstrong is trying to say Dr. Hawwash was the one who decided to bring Khalek out of stasis. Too bad Dr. Woods is one of the survivors."

Woods was in the office. He'd been going to follow Dani down into the lab before Cam dragged him out of there. He closes his eyes. Armstrong. Yeah, that makes sense. Unfortunately. And the butchers' bill was too damned high. It always seems to be when the NID is involved.

"So what now?" he asks.

Sam takes his hand, squeezes it gently. "We go home. We go back to work. Don't worry, Cam. You made the right call."

He wonders if letting Vala Mal Doran go made a difference, and on which side of the balance. (He wonders what Little Miss was thinking when she told Vala there's a superweapon on Ba'al's throneworld; maybe he'll find out later.) He wonders if this is a war Earth can win.

"Hey," he says. "Think General Landry'll let us all go home for Christmas?"

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cam deals with his PTSD. Khalek kills a lot of people. Cam kills Khalek by shooting him in the head. Mention of brain matter spattered around.


	15. DECEMBER 2006—JANUARY 2007

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SG-1 goes to Cam's house for Christmas. Then they come back to the SGC, and Ish'ta asks them for a favor...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings in endnotes.

The four of them fly into the Greenville/Spartanburg Airport in the middle of the afternoon on the 23rd. Leave and getting it and when never used to matter. All of them orphans in their own ways (even if Sammy had family she refused to own and and Teal'c had family he couldn't claim). They were each other's family and they made their holidays when they could, not when the calendar said they were. With Cam it's different. Cam has a family. And he loves them and he wants to see them. (Sam's said that Cam would usually bring half his command home for any holiday he could get leave for; that was how they'd met.)

Cassie's already here (after last year she's family enough, Cam says, to have come here directly from school). Sammy's spent a lot of Christmases at Chez Mitchell, and says it's more of a zoo at Christmas than at Thanksgiving (not that Dani has a basis of comparison) but that they should both be safe ("them" being her and Teal'c) since neither of them is marrying into the family, so they'll be spared the worst of "it." (Whatever "it" is.) The Mitchell family (Sammy says and Cam confirms) believes that anybody who marries a Mitchell should understand what they're in for, is the implication. (Fortunately she has no plans to marry anyone. Ever.)

And oh, god, Dani would rather go to _Netu_ (Sokar and all, except he's dead) than to Black Mountain for Christmas, but Cam's got leave (because of Khalek, which is almost funny) and Cassie's here and he's gotten permission to bring Teal'c and she feels guilty and obligated and she's not entirely sure why he's so hell-bent on having her _meet his family_ but she's afraid that if she doesn't go, General Landry will find some way to keep Cam in Colorado, and she _can't screw that up._

Merry Fucking Christmas.

She isn't sure what she's expecting. Teal'c looks prepared to be fascinated by everything, of course. He's been all over the galaxy, and to Russia, and he drove across the country once (in 1969) but this is the first time he's been to North Carolina.

They're met at the luggage carousel (they're flying commercial) by a man who looks a lot like Cam. There's a lot of whooping and back-pounding (Teal'c raises an eyebrow) and then the man hugs Sammy too and Dani retreats behind Cam in case he intends to hug her next, but fortunately he stops with Sammy and by then Cam has explained that this is his brother Ash. And Ash says "So I finally get to meet Dani," and she _looks_ at Cam, because ... has he been talking about her? And if so, what the hell has he been saying? And for just a moment she wants to tell Ash to call her 'Dr. Jackson,' but that would be both silly and rude.

Ash helps them collect their luggage, and says their presents got here just fine and are already under the tree, and come on before they tow Cindy away, and at first she thinks Cindy might be a truck, but Sammy mouths _'wife'_ at her and they get out to the loading zone and there's an actual mini-van waiting there with a smiling blonde woman behind the wheel and Cam leans in the driver's side door to kiss her and say, "you still married to this loser?" and the woman laughs and says, "hell, Cam, he in't home much," and Ash and Cam pile all of their bags into the back and they all climb in, Ash up front with Cindy, the rest of them in the back.

Oh, god, she wishes she was back in Colorado Springs _right this minute._

It's about a ninety-minute drive to the house, and the first part isn't bad, because Cam and Ash and Cindy are catching up on local gossip (Ashton Mitchell—she already knew—is also in the Air Force, but since he isn't working in a Top Secret Military Program run by crazy people, he's got two weeks leave, so he and his family have already been here for several days), and Dani is hoping the three of them will talk among themselves the whole way (Sammy can help if she likes; Dani doesn't mind), but then Cindy says, "oh, where are my manners?" and starts asking her and Teal'c about themselves.

Yes, they work with Cam. Yes, it's a really nice place. No, it really isn't anything very exciting.

"I go for coffee," Teal'c announces, and there's a respectful moment of silence.

Okay, yeah, maybe his coverstory still needs a little work. And just wait until they get a look at what they decided back in the Springs to call his 'tribal scarifications,' because there's really no way he can keep his hat on for the entire visit.

She really wants to go home.

But the only way Teal'c can be here (in the eyes of the Stargate Program) is if she's here to keep an eye on him, because she's spent ten years explaining the world to Teal'c (and, sometimes, explaining Teal'c to the world). And she knows that Teal'c really wanted to come to Cam's for Christmas (as much as Cam wanted him to, really). So here they both are.

At least it's only four days. She's been held prisoner in dungeons longer than that. How bad can it be? (Well, never mind that. The point is, you can put up with pretty much _anything_ for four days, and Cam's family is fairly unlikely to be torturing them, at least in the conventional sense.)

And Cam says, "now shoot, Cindy Lou, you know it's all classified," and the woman actually _giggles,_ and Dani shoots Cam a look of mingled shock and betrayal, because she's pretty sure he isn't supposed to _say_ things are classified (even if they are), and he just grins at her. Happy to be home, obviously, because if there's one thing she knows about Cam by now (and she actually knows a lot of things about Cam by now), it's that he loves his family.

And she wants him to be happy, because god knows _somebody_ should be, and he deserves it, and he has a chance at it, and if...

_"He loves you, you know. You can watch him die."_ Khalek's words circle in her memory like waiting sharks.

But Cindy (Cindy _Lou?_ ) seems willing to accept the enforced change of subject. Of course, that just means she moves on to what she feels is a safe subject, and the very next words out of her mouth are: "So how long have you been seeing Cam, Dani?"

And Dani _cannot make that sentence make sense_ no matter how long she looks at it. "We've been working together about a year and a half," she finally says. Because that, at least, is true.

And thank god Sammy jumps in then, asking how the kids are doing, so Dani learns that Ash and Cindy have three—Chandler, Stewart, and Lucy. Lucy's two; Stewart's nine, Chandler's twelve, and they're all wildly-excited about the thought of coming to live with Gran'ma next year, because Ash is going to be doing an overseas tour (three months) and it's Tradition for the rest of the family to come home during that time.

Dani doesn't need that one explained at all. Ash might die. And if he does, better for his family to already be safely ensconced within the larger kin-group.

Conversation moves on around her. They're out of the city now, and on the superhighway. Open country. Farmland. Not much of the state is farmable, but the northeastern section is, and that's where the Mitchells live. All of them. An extended family spread out over several hundred miles. Not all of them are Mitchells, of course. There are Griffiths and Ashtons and Camerons and Chandlers and Stewarts and Butlers and half-a-dozen others, but they're all interrelated. Interconnected.

Out here there are open fields and billboards and the houses are (mostly) not near the road. The climate's different than in Colorado (of course). Warmer in December. Everything's still green, and the air is soft. The houses she can see from the road are a mix, everything from house trailers to brick mid-century ranches to old white clapboards in need of painting. A couple of barns, too, off on the horizon. They aren't red, though, which surprises her.

They get off the highway, and onto a secondary road, and then onto an even-more-secondary road, and Cam smiles at her and says "almost there," and all she's thinking of is that not only is she _lost_ but she's pretty sure there isn't any such thing as a taxi service out here. And then they're turning into a single-lane dirt road, but there was a mailbox at the turn, so she guesses it's really a driveway.

They're here.

It's a big house. White, old, rambling. Deep porch with a swing. Tree in the front yard with a tire-and-rope tied to it. The garage is open. Two cars parked inside, and about half a dozen more parked outside. That means there are a lot of people already here. She takes a deep breath. She can do this.

And Cindy pulls the van up behind someone, and parks, and Cam says, "we can get our stuff later," (obviously eager to get inside, to see his family) and they all get out, and Cindy Lou says "better to do it now," and goes around to the back of the minivan, and Cam follows along meekly, and a few moments later the bags are all sorted out, with Cam and Ash carrying most of them.

Just another First Contact situation. She can do this.

They go inside.

And it's just as well that there's nothing breakable in any of their luggage, because the moment they're in the front door, Cam and Sammy are being swarmed by people who were apparently _lying in wait_ for them. There's a large amount of hugging, and gleeful outcries (Cassie hugs her very hard, bouncing and sun-blonde and sunburned), and far too many people look at her and say "so _this_ is Dani," and she _really_ has to have a talk with Cam soon, because she doesn't actually think he had any business mentioning her to his relatives in the first place, and aside from that, she wants to know what the hell he _said._

Cam's making introductions, and she's doing her best, but she can barely attach names to faces at this point, let alone parse relationships. But all of a sudden the crowd parts like the Red Sea, and a middle-aged woman (blue eyes, faded blonde hair) comes in and demands to know if they were all raised in a barn, keeping people standing around this way.

"This's my momma," Cam says. "Momma, this is Dani."

"You are the mother of a fine son, Mrs. Mitchell," she says. She plays back her words a moment later and her heart sinks. Where the hell is her brain today? Fine for ... a number of other cultures she's lived in (and loved). For North Carolina? Probably not.

But Mrs. Mitchell just nods, as if people say things like that to her all the time, and says that Cameron hasn't told her nearly enough about her, and if people don't have enough to do, they can get those bags off to the bedrooms instead of leaving them in the _foy-yay_ for people to trip and break their necks on, and the crowd scatters in all directions (with the bags) and Mrs. Mitchell is saying "Cameron?" in a rather dangerous tone, and looking at Teal'c. And Dani isn't quite sure Cam remembers what they decided to call Teal'c, so she says, "This is Murray Teale. He works with us, Mrs. Mitchell."

And Mrs. Mitchell looks at Teal'c (all six foot several of him), and Teal'c looks at Mrs. Mitchell, and Dani would swear that Cam is holding his breath. But she nods, and says, "pleased to meet you, Mr. Teale," and Teal'c bows. It's one of his best bows, too, and Dani thinks it's a shame that Mrs. Mitchell isn't ever going to realize what an honor she's been done. Jaffa warriors don't bow to just anyone.

And Cam says, "where's Gran'ma?" and Mrs. Mitchell says, "she's in the kitchen helping me get dinner on the table," and Cam starts off that way, and Mrs. Mitchell grabs him by the arm and says, "I think, _Cameron,_ that you might want to show folks where they can get changed, first, so they don't spoil their clothes."

And Cam actually blushes, and ducks his head, and says, "Yes'm," and Sammy snickers. And Mrs. Mitchell turns on her and tells her she can come down off her high horse any time she pleases, _Samantha Eileen_ , because there's a whole sink full of dishes with her name on it. And Sammy suddenly turns meek, and Cam says "right this way." Hastily.

He leads them up the stairs, and pokes into a couple of rooms before he finds the right ones. She and Sammy and Cassie are sharing—a little tight, but not a problem. Cam and Teal'c will be sharing Cam's old room (Cam and Ash's, really, back in the long ago). She peeks in. It has royal-blue wallpaper with unlikely red-and-yellow cartoon spaceships all over it (mostly hidden behind bookcases and desks and furniture.) Awards and photos and trophies of an unimaginable life (unimaginable to Dani, anyway) cover the walls; model airplanes and spaceships hang from the ceiling. The floor is archaeological layers; old wood covered by linoleum rug covered by worn and threadbare oriental rug covered by bright and gaudy hooked rug (pansies on a green background.) It shouldn't all go together, but it does. She looks at the bunk beds. "You'd better put T on the bottom," she says.

"I'm thinking," Cam says.

"Cam—" she says. Because she wants to know what he's said to his family.

"Come on, Aunt Dani!" Cassie says, tugging at her arm. "You need to get changed!"

Dani wore one of her (surviving) 'talk to the Russians' outfits to fly down in, because no matter what Cam said (and what Sammy said) about how casual things were here, it only made sense to have one formal outfit. And besides, Sammy said that attending church on Christmas Eve was, if not compulsory, certainly something just about the whole family did, and Dani hasn't been in a church voluntarily in twenty years (aside from funerals) but she's pretty sure that you don't wear a flannel shirt and chinos to a religious service. But it's a relief (now) to get out of that outfit and into something more comfortable. Cassie chatters nonstop the whole time; telegraphic details of life at school (all the gossip Dani missed at their truncated Thanksgiving, and that Saturday is barely a month ago in ordinary time, but so much has happened since that it seems like years). 

She's barely finished changing when Cam knocks on the door, asking if they're decent. Sammy laughs, and says: "no, but come in, anyway," and he opens the door.

He was dressed casually for the flight down (jacket and sports shirt and slacks; clothes she's seen a hundred times) but now he's wearing jeans and flannel shirt open over a t-shirt, and he looks five years younger than he does at home. But of course that isn't Cam's home. This is.

And she still wants to ask him what he's said about her, but there isn't time or privacy even now. The Mitchell household at the Christmas holiday isn't really a zoo (as Sammy said) it actually more closely resembles a non-destructive indoor riot. They're all heading back down the stairs again (and she knows just who to thank for the fact that Teal'c is now sporting a "University of North Carolina" muscle-shirt) and Cassie is dashing off because 'Jessie's here,' and Cam's steering Dani toward the back of the house, and she looks up at him, and he says, "want you to meet my daddy."

And she _will not panic_. She won't.

The door's mostly closed, but not all the way, and she can hear the sound of a television from inside. Cam doesn't go in, though. He knocks on the doorframe. And a couple of minutes later a man comes over and opens it. Not Cam's father—he's got two good legs. And Cam says, "Uncle Roy," and there's more hugging, and she'd know by now (if she hadn't figured it out so very long ago) that this is just why it is that Cam's so ... tactile. It's the culture he was raised in. Everyone touches here.

And she hears a voice from inside say, "that Cameron?" and Cam's Uncle Roy says, "sure is, Everett, and he's got Danielle with him," and the sound of the television shuts off and Mr. Mitchell says, "well don't leave them standing around out there like the hired help," and Uncle Roy (she doesn't know yet whether he's a Mitchell or a Griffith; she'll have to ask Cam later) opens the door.

It's a den room. Couch, chairs, television, and (obviously) where the "menfolk" are hiding out. She has no trouble picking Everett Mitchell out of the half-dozen men present, though, and wouldn't even without the tell of the crutch-canes at his side. She's pretty sure (given what they all do for a living) that Cam isn't going to be alive in another quarter of a century, but if she wants to get a good idea of what he'd look like, there's his father. She knows as much as Cam's told her: Air Force. Test pilot ( _like Jack, once upon a time,_ her mind supplies.) Lost both legs in a crash when Cam was ten and his brother was eight. Didn't take the retirement the Air Force offered him. Taught instead. He's retired now, though. He smiles when he sees her, and in that moment he looks just like Cam.

"You'll pardon me I don't get up," he says, and he sounds like Cam, too. Cam when he's happy.

"Of course," she says, and crosses the room, Cam beside her. Introductions flurry around her—Ev and George and (another) George and Clifton and Zechariah and Alvin—and she does her best to match names to faces. There's a resemblance here that goes beyond genetics. The imprint of a culture.

And Cam's father holds out his hand and she takes it, but instead of a handshake, he gives her a double-handed clasp. His hands are warm and rough. "You takin' care of my boy, Danielle?" he asks.

It would be a simple question if he knew what they really did in their lives, but she knows he doesn't. She tells him the truth anyway. "Yes. I am." Because she is. It's her job, and more than her job.

Mr. Mitchell smiles, and releases her hand. She steps back, and Cam leans in to collect a hug from his father. "Work been treatin' you all right, Cameron?" Mr. Mitchell asks.

"Yes sir," Cam says.

"Well, that's good. You run along now. I 'spect your momma'll be wantin' help in the kitchen."

And so, dismissed, they leave. Cam pulls the door shut behind him. She hears the sound of the television resume.

_"Cameron,"_ she says, because here in the hallway they have a moment's privacy. "Just what the _hell_ have you been telling these people?"

And he drapes an arm around her shoulders and grins at her; she has to resist the urge to lean in to him. "Nothin', baby. Nothin' that ain't the truth. C'mon to the kitchen. Want to introduce you to m'Gran'ma."

On the way there, she sees more of the house. (She suspects Cam's giving her the tour to save her from having to confront his entire family in too-quick succession.) There's a gigantic tree (eight feet) in the Front Parlor, and the whole house is decorated. Something almost entirely outside her experience. There was one traditional American Christmas while she was in her placements, but she hadn't wanted anything to do with it. Nothing earlier. Nothing later, until Chicago, and that was more along the lines of a Dickensian evening. Not like this.

Nothing in her entire experience has prepared her for Cam's family.

#

In the kitchen, Sammy's washing dishes while Mrs. Mitchell cuts something up on a wooden breadboard. There's a woman older still sitting at the kitchen table.

"So you're Cam's girl," the old woman says.

She can't figure out what to say to that, because she doesn't want to contradict the woman (the Clan Matriarch, and it doesn't matter whether or not the Mitchells would recognize or accept the term; facts are facts). But she _isn't_ 'Cam's girl.' So she says, "and you're Cameron's grandmother."

It seems to be an adequate response. The old woman nods decisively. "M'm. Sassy's my daughter."

She glances at Cam. Cam flicks his eyes toward the stove. 'Sassy' is 'Momma' is 'Mrs. Mitchell', given name "Sara". Dani nods, cudgeling her brain for appropriate ritual responses. None present themselves, but fortunately none seems to be needed. Grand'ma Mitchell tells Cam to reach her down the jar of sweetening (it's molasses, Dani notes in passing), and there's a flurry of talk Dani can't follow (ritual call-and-response; shared history, shared identity), and then the talk turns to the planning of the coming meal. Feeding forty-five people requires major logistical skills and a talent for organization that's usually involved in invading foreign countries. Momma Mitchell's been doing it for thirty years.

#

He's been hoping to get her down for Christmas since ... well, the day they met, actually. And he's just as glad not to have to explain to Momma this year why the girl he bespoke an afghan for _last_ Christmas wouldn't come visit his kin. But that doesn't mean he thought the visit was going to be easy. The Mitchell madhouse has sent future spouses and long-time partners heading for the nearest exit with wild-eyed expressions: they're a large, loud, happy extended family, especially at the holidays.

But it's evening of the day they arrived, and Little Miss is standing fast. She's off in a corner of the kitchen with Momma and Grand'ma and Cindy and close to a round dozen of the women, one of those gatherings-within-a-gathering, and anything they settle among them he figures he'll get updated on in due time; the women run the family and always have, a tradition dating pretty much back to the first time a Mitchell man kissed his bride and told her he'd be back when the fighting was done.

He knows why Little Miss is in that gaggle. He's not sure whether he hopes she figures it out, or hopes she doesn't because it's the one thing likely to make her bolt. But right now he's just fascinated watching her, because he knows how she is with strangers, and, well, 'reserved' doesn't even begin to describe it.

She's got one of his third cousins balanced on her hip, pretty much ignoring her except for the occasional jostle to keep her asleep. And when people move in to touch her—emphasizing points, sharing the joke; his whole family does that—she isn't flinching away. Touching some of them back just the same way, and that's when he realizes (amused more than not) that she's decided she's talking to a bunch of weird aliens, because he's seen her just like this more times than he remembers. When you meet the weird aliens, you do what they do in order to establish trust and communication. Normal rules don't apply.

He wishes she didn't have to think of it as a job of work in order to get through Christmas. It's not that he doesn't think she's being honest with the family because of it (of course, not in terms of, well, telling them things, because she can't and neither can he) because he knows she is. She's honestly and genuinely interested in practically everything, and she's been as interested in listening to Cousin Henry's account of rebuilding the engine in that pony car he salvaged from the junkyard as she would be in the Asgard telling her the meaning of life. It's why, he suspects, she's had so much success with their alien allies: she's not really all that diplomatic (if she doesn't approve of what you're doing you're going to hear about it), and watching her try to lie (most of the time) is a painful experience (she's just too conscious of what the truth is, he suspects, to say anything but), but she likes them. All of them. (Even the _Tok'ra,_ and they're pretty hard to like, and not because of the whole symbiote thing either.) And she wants to do right by them and that's pretty much why most of them are still talking to Earth.

So as far as that goes, she's being herself. One of her selves, anyway. The one she is on the other side of the Gate, and Cam thinks it's probably one of life's bigger jokes that that version of Little Miss is a lot more _her_ than the one she is most of the time at home.

#

The house doesn't settle down to real quiet until around three; Dani doesn't bother to go to bed (Cassie's taken over the bedroom with someone named Jessie and a bunch of other female Mitchells her own age; around midnight Sammy announces she's going to go pitch a tent in the Back Forty, and Cam offers her the top bunk in his bedroom). There's been nothing less than fifty people in the house—with gusts of up to seventy—since they arrived, and apparently nobody ever sleeps. Certainly the kids don't. Dani thinks Cam didn't mean to go to bed anyway; she thinks he wants as much of _home_ as he can get. Storing it up, because each time may be the last time. They sit up together, in a room Cam calls the Old Kitchen, though it isn't any kind of a kitchen now (a massive fieldstone hearth covers most of one wall, though, and there are ancient rusted pothooks mortared into the walls). Cam talks about Christmasses past (providing a sideways briefing, she thinks, as much as reminiscing).

She casts her mind back through the years, dredging up memories of holidays celebrated in winter in half a dozen countries. So many of the memories, even though remembered faithfully, make little sense to her now; there's been no one to interpret them for her, decode a child's impression of events. She offers them up anyway, along with others: learning to drive (age nine), and getting drunk for the first time (Russian vodka, age ten, and she still can't stand vodka). The parts of her history that are funny, or can be made to seem so, and seeing her past through Cam's eyes makes it more palatable than when she sees it through her own. Which interpretation is the true one? Both, she thinks.

He's changed her, changed them all, so slowly she never noticed.

#

Christmas Eve begins pretty much at dawn with runs to the airport to pick up last arrivals, (not her; she doesn't know the area), and Cam's said everybody isn't here yet. There are still fifty people at breakfast. Eighteen at the main dining room table. Another six at the table in the kitchen. Sixteen at the two tables in the living room. The rest of them standing up at the kitchen counter (actually the best seat in the house—food's hottest and first dibs on refills).

By now she's realized that tasks in the family are allotted on a number of axes: age and relationship (to the Direct Line, Dani realizes, listening to the explanation Cam probably doesn't realize he's giving) and other responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are children (if under the age of two years). Others are duty to country—a lot of the people here are home on flying leave, just like Cam is, and depending on where they've come from and what they were doing there, they're expected to do anything from nothing (like Peter, here from the Middle East) to pitch in elbow-deep, like Cam. (Like them.) 

Age Hath Its Privileges: people two generations up from Cam get to supervise. People one generation up get to delegate. Cam's generation does the grunt work, the next generation down does the scut-work, on down to the Mitchells that mostly have to be supervised. But they don't get out of the work, except the littlest, because they're being trained up in the way they should go. (It's a clan, Dani realizes. In the clan, everybody works.) Right now a couple of Cam's cousins (male and female both) are upstairs on Baby Watch, finishing the business of getting the infants fed and set up for the morning and keeping an eye on them while their parents are busy (Dani's volunteered for custody of Dawn Rose this morning because Dawn Rose is fussy and would have set off the entire nursery.) A couple of the youngest toddlers are in the kitchen with them in high chairs; the middling ones are in the living room with the intermediate children (who are in charge of getting them fed) and adults to ensure a lack of bloodshed.

It's as efficient as an assembly line. It has to be.

#

Momma's accepted that Dani can't cook—he and Sam and Little Miss have all said so—and the fact that she's willing to _help_ carries a lot of weight, because she'll wash and chop and peel, and she's more than willing to take on more than her fair share of the dishes. Cam knows she's got a sense of what's 'fair' that's a little more than a mile wide, and she's already seen that there aren't any (many) guests at Christmas. So she thinks it's only fair that she do what she can do, when there are so many things she can't.

But he's still more than a little surprised, coming in from a run to the store (always going to be running out of things with this many people in the house, and the Big Store closes at noon on Christmas Eve, so that means up and out right after breakfast; it's twenty miles each way) to see her sitting at Aunt Ada's feet, both hands out holding a skein of knitting wool while Aunt Ada winds it, and chattering away nineteen to the dozen. Mainly surprising because Aunt Ada is deaf as a _post,_ and has said for years that the only way she gets through Christmas in this madhouse is to turn off her store-bought ears when she comes through the door and not turn them on again until she leaves.

And then he gets a little closer, and realizes that she isn't talking to Aunt Ada at all, but to Little Ev (she's got maybe ten years on him, but he's almost a foot taller; just as well the boy hasn't got his heart set on flying), and she isn't talking English at all.

And Little Ev laughs, and makes a 'slow down' motion with his hand, and Cam gets closer, and Little Ev says something, and she says it back to him, and he sighs, grinning, and shakes his head, and tries again.

Arabic, Cam thinks.

#

By early evening on Christmas Eve, the entire house is full of relatives, and she's dizzy with trying to keep them all straight—not the kinship relationships (fairly easy), but the numbers and the names. Cam finds it entertaining that she can tell him who's related to whom but can't tell him what their names are. She thinks it's a little more useful than the other way around, actually.

"Cam, how many people are here?" she asks at one point.

"Um. Sixty-eight? No, wait, sixty-nine ... no, seventy. I think. Unless anybody else got here and I just haven't noticed yet." 

She stares at him in disbelief. "There are _more people coming?_ And how do you notice them in the _middle_ of all of this?" 

He takes her hand. "Practice, baby. Practice."

#

The church is beyond packed for (what Cam assures her is) the traditionally "Mitchells Only" Christmas Eve service; people crammed into pews, people sitting on folding chairs at the back, children sitting on laps. It would make more sense (probably) to leave somebody home with the youngest children for the service, but that isn't even a possibility under consideration. She has a five-year-old on her knee and a baby on her shoulder. Cam's lap is eagerly fought over, of course.

Then it's home again, and time for dessert. (Second Dessert; the Mitchell women are serving five meals today, with midnight snack to come.) It's more of a Viennese Table than a conventional (as far as the word applies) meal, since everybody who isn't _actually staying here_ has brought extra desserts (every house within a ten-mile radius is packed full of Mitchells who've come from even further away). The kids are bouncing off the walls with a combination of seeing their relatives and Christmas Eve and all that sugar; she's pretty sure the adults' plan is to allow them all to drive themselves into a coma in order to get a little peace.

The unrelenting pressure of so many people is getting to her. It's wearing, like a constant noise, even though she likes them. Likes this. Likes all of it. Something Sammy doesn't really know about her (nobody does, because to know it they'd have to know about her past) is that she didn't grow up alone, or wanting to be alone. Her childhood and early adolescence was fully-populated; she grew up in camps and dig-sites across the Middle East and Central America. Never alone. 

The desire for privacy came later, with the scars. With the understanding that she wasn't like anyone else, and never would be. Peerless, in the worst sense of the word. Abydos was like coming home. _(But she won't think about that, because she can never go back there again.)_ And Cam's family reminds her of home in a different way. 

But it's exhausting, too, because here she has to pretend. To remember to be someone else, a person she rarely has to be, because she almost never goes out among people—back in Colorado—for whom it's necessary to trot out her cover identity. And it really doesn't fit very well.

So after they get back from the service—retelling of a myth of hope, bound awkwardly into historical time but comforting nonetheless—she goes inside, and changes (out of the formal garments of respect, back to the nearly-as-unfamiliar casual—civilian—clothes), and while everyone is admiring the dining room table (with all the leaves in, it's eighteen feet long) covered with cakes and pies and platters of cookies and items she can't easily identify (and five five-gallon tubs of ice cream), she slips outside, into the dark.

Behind her, the house is brightly-lit. Through the uncurtained windows she can see the tree (formally unveiled this afternoon, and a series of smaller gifts distributed among the younger generation, a sop to Cerberus). Oddly appropriate, her being out here and all of them in there. She can hear the laughter and the noise. Someone's playing the piano. Late supper soon, then bed. Formal presentation of the ritual gifts in the morning (theirs are already under the tree, courtesy of Cam's mother and Federal Express). 

Tomorrow (probably today already, technically) is Christmas Day. They fly back to Colorado the day after. Even odds they'll be dead before the New Year; that's always been true. At least Cam will have had one more Christmas home. Sammy and Cassie will have had one more Christmas together. That's something.

She sees the front door open, and Cam steps out. He's missed her and he's coming to look for her. She steps behind the tree in the front yard. It isn't to hide. She knows he'll see the movement. A few moments later he's there beside her, leaning against the tree. The oak is big enough to have been there before the house was. Ancient and venerable.

"When Albert got engaged to Cousin Mayretta, we had to hide his car keys, his first Christmas here," Cam says. "Otherwise, he'd'a took off running and not stopped until he reached the state line."

"I like them," she says, just to be contrary. It's the truth, anyway.

"M'm. 'S why you're out here."

"Hard to know who to be."

"Just be you."

Easy enough for him to say. Harder for her to do. She's never been quite sure of who she is, really. Her work, yes, she's always been that. But beyond that? She's not really sure. She doesn't think there _is_ anyone; that's the trouble, since if she's judged by her work...

"I've failed at everything I've ever done," she blurts out. She knows it sounds like self-pitying hyperbole (a tacit solicitation of reassuring contradiction). Too bad, because she's being honest. Academia and the acceptance of her theories: a lost cause. Opening the Stargate only brought Earth to the attention of the _Goa'uld_. And while they've won some of the battles—no particular thanks to her—they seem to be losing the war. Anubis is out there (Khalek hinted that he's still alive, and they don't dare just assume he was wrong), and there's a weapon on Dakara (wherever it is, whatever it is) that promises Game Over (if it still works after fifty million years, but hey, the Stargates do: the Ancients built to last...). The bottom line is: despite what people seem to think, she's simply _not good at things._

"I won't let you fall," Cam answers.

And in the shift between 'fail' and 'fall,' suddenly they're on a different subject entirely. A place they've been going for months. 

She glances at him. He's watching her. His expression is serious.

They keep circling around this, and she always backs away from it, unwilling to let it resolve. Not tonight. She wonders if he knows. (She didn't tell him what Khalek said to her, not that part. She doesn't think she ever will. Part of it he already knows. The other part...)

"It's up to you, baby. Always has been," Cam says quietly.

He's never lied to her. And this is truth. She could walk away now, they could go on just as they are for the rest of their lives. He will love her. And he won't expect anything from her in return.

She doesn't think she actually has anything to give. But he can have whatever she has. Everything she has. Everything she is. Not extorted, but offered. She's seen Cam with his family now, and seeing him (in context) has realized that he'll never break, never shatter. Antarctica didn't destroy him, or whatever happened at Nellis, and the Gate won't either. He's too firmly rooted in these people. They'll always reinvent his humanity for him, if he's ever in any danger of ... being lost.

It's her last excuse, her last _reason,_ and it's gone.

That just leaves her.

If he won't change, will she?

Because it wouldn't be fair to him if she did. And that's what she wants most of all, more than her own happiness. To be fair to him. Not fair to promise, to offer, something that won't be there next month, next year, in two years, or ten.

But while there are things you can't plan for—the sort of injuries that take place beyond the Gate, when your mind, your self, is taken away, and (maybe) when it's given back it isn't quite the same as it was before—she thinks, short of that, she won't change (any more than Cam has already changed her). She's already gone about as crazy as she's going to go. She's been doing this almost half her adult life now. The Program has remade her in its image. Set, if not in stone, then beyond all reasonable expectation of further mutation. _I am as constant as the moon..._

All that leaves is death. She knows he won't leave her short of death. That he won't burn out, burn up, hit the wall ... any of the other charming euphemisms the Teams have for being destroyed by what they do. And all her damage has long since been done. She can't promise not to die, and neither can he. She still hopes, when it happens, it's together. She really doesn't want to survive him.

She turns toward him, resting her hand on his chest. He looks a little surprised, she thinks. Well, she doesn't touch him that often.

But she tilts her face back, watching him. She's made her intentions plain, she hopes. She's not sure she knows the right words for this situation, though she knows plenty of wrong ones.

His hands come up, away from the tree. One hand rests on her hip. The other beneath her chin. There's no coercion here. She's the one who moves, taking the last half-step forward. When he kisses her, he's still not holding her. She could move away at any moment.

But she doesn't. His mouth is soft on hers. The kiss is gentle, undemanding, nearly chaste. 

She thought it would make everything clear, but it doesn't. She doesn't know what she wants, except impossible things. Certainty they'll all be alive and here this time next year. The knowledge she can make him happy. To know what to do: now, next, always, because _taking care_ isn't something she does, and any time she's tried, the lives she's tried to husband have sifted through her fingers like desert sand.

So she kisses him, because she's wanted this too. For so much longer than she's been willing to admit.

And then, at last, his arms go around her and he holds her close. As if he'd been waiting to be sure. For her to be sure. And she isn't—not in the way (she thinks) that he is. She's only sure that this is what she wants. Not really that it's possible.

She's been kissed many times. Never really like this.

Both sane, both adult, and both wanting—more or less—the same things from life. A first in her experience, really. And now that she's where she tried so hard for so long not to be (for the right reasons, for the wrong reasons), she _wants_ and she _yearns_. Wanting more. Now.

Can't.

He raises his head, breaking the kiss, turning his head away, because if he isn't within a heartbeat of lying down on the ground with her—right here—she's that close to asking him to.

And then her head is tucked under his chin, and she can feel his heartbeat. She's warm where she's pressed against him, and she can't decide whether the time and place are perfect or the worst possible. Back home _(but this is Cam's home)_ he could take her to bed. Not here. Good or bad?

It's the next step. Inevitable. And another thing she can't quite make up her mind about. Damaged goods, after all. At least she doesn't have to tell him. He already knows. And if he doesn't know _quite_ how damaged the goods are (because no one does; it's nothing that would ever show up on any security review, no matter how invasive), maybe he never needs to. She'll do everything she can to make him happy.

"We'll work it out," he says quietly. One hand comes up, smoothing her hair down, tucking a few strands back behind her ear. She leans into his touch, rubbing her cheek against his knuckles. Things she's wanted. Things she's refused to allow herself for so long.

"Your family already thinks you belong to me," she says. They do. 'Cam's girl.' And, well, she supposes she is.

"Always have," he answers.

And it terrifies her, and it delights her, the thought of possessing and being possessed. Not physically—that's old (and on the whole generally disappointing) news—but emotionally. Not just to be loved, but the chance to love. It's more important than being loved, really. The chance to love someone else. It isn't necessary, really, to be loved in return. Though of course it's nice.

She's loved Cam, she realizes, for quite a long time. She hadn't wanted to, sure it would end badly. In more pain, more loss. She can't face losing anyone else that she loves that much. She's not sure, doesn't want to think, about who else there's been. It doesn't matter now. Last loves are lasting, and this is her last. For better or worse, from this day forward, it's Cam.

"Forever," she says, and he laughs a little.

"Oh, baby. Longer'n that."

"All right," she says. Longer than forever sounds good right now.

#

A few minutes later they go inside. He holds her hand, and for this brief span of time she doesn't care what those few people who know her elsewhere will see, and think. There's cake, and the clearing away of the remains, and she washes dishes in the night-dim kitchen with the numinous sense of participating in an ancient and hallowed ritual. Cam pours her the last of the coffee, and they go to sit in front of the fire. She falls asleep on his shoulder. Safe. Familiar. Cherished.

Around five-thirty she hears the ceiling creak, then the solid booming thump that means someone has jumped to the floor from some great height. Cam sighs and stirs, waking. 

"Time to get this show on the road," he says. "Merry Christmas, baby girl."

"Merry Christmas," she says. And it is.

Breakfast isn't quite a sit-down meal (they're actually going to manage that later, when the house will be twice as full), but everyone gets fed, and the children (rug-rats, Cam says affectionately) are dancing around with demented desperation to be let into the Front Parlor _right now._

And then (at last) it's time for the opening of the presents (the population of the house has nearly doubled by that time). It's loud and chaotic and she sees one or two people (fiancées, here for the first time) edging back toward the walls, a little wild-eyed. She gathers her treasures as they come to her: a stuffed hippo from Teal'c. A luridly rhinestoned sleep-shirt from Cassie (with a highly-improbable image of Cleopatra on the front). A pendant from Sammy (with an apologetic shrug Dani has no trouble decoding; she was wearing the lotus pendant when she went to Area 51 and lost it there somewhere).

Cam has given her four pairs of socks, hand-knitted. Ordinary as bread, precious as salt, the work of his own hands, carrying a message easily unseen by profane eyes, visible to the initiate. Perfect.

It takes nearly three hours to completely denude the tree of presents, and by the time they're done, the noise level in the house has reached a stable (high) level of boisterousness. Children. Toys. Laughter. 

If she believed in Heaven, Dani thinks, it would sound like this.

#

On the 26th they fly back (Cassie too, to spend the rest of her holiday with Sammy). There isn't time for anything Dani's expecting, intending, hoping for (like going home, like kissing him again), because Cam's pinged in-flight. It's nothing important enough to make him show ID and ask the pilot to put down immediately so he can get a secure land-line (for which the other passengers would probably be grateful if they knew), so Anubis probably hasn't arrived. But when they land and he calls in (has to find the Security office first, because while they're all carrying their cellphones, none of them is carrying one that can ring a phone all the way down to Level 26), they're asked to come to the SGC immediately. (All of them, which is a kind of relief because it means nobody wants to take Cam off somewhere private to _shoot him_.)

When they arrive, Ish'ta is waiting for them in General Landry's office.

Jaffa culture is reactionary. Jaffa warriors are male, Jaffa women stay home. Ish'ta's Hak'tyl don't follow this tradition: it helps that their _Goa'uld_ overlord, Moloch, was idiotic enough to simply kill off every female Jaffa born in his domain, with the idea of encouraging his warriors to fight by making the only way that they could obtain women being to steal them from other _Goa'uld_. Ish'ta, a priestess, one of the few surviving women in Moloch's domain, spent years smuggling out Jaffa girls, raising and hiding them in secret. Now the Hak'tyl rebels have become the nucleus of the Jaffa faction that doesn't feel that the fight for freedom is a wholly male prerogative.

One of the things all the rebel factions constantly have to do is raid the _Goa'uld_ for _prim'ta_ —there isn't enough tretonin to go around, and many Jaffa don't trust it anyway. The younger the _prim'ta_ the better, since the maximum amount of time they can get out of a symbiote is a decade, and whatever happens, they don't dare let it mature and take over whoever carries it. Every year, of course, it's gotten harder, and Anubis is making it harder still. The stronger the Jaffa rebellion gets, the more closely the (surviving) _Goa'uld_ guard their offspring. And whoever manages to get their hands on any _prim'ta_ isn't likely to share: the factions of the Jaffa Liberation Movement cooperate about as well as the (eight) factions of the French Resistance ever did.

So when Ish'ta heard of a shipment of _prim'ta_ being moved, the Hak'tyl mobilized immediately. And so did someone else.

Ish'ta has no idea who they are. All she knows is that they had never been marked by any _Goa'uld_. They fought in a style she had never seen, killing all of the Jaffa guarding the _prim'ta_...and most of Ish'ta's raiding party as well. She was able to follow them back to the Stargate, where she saw the address that they dialed.

She's come to demand Teal'c's aid in achieving _kel'mar._ Ish'ta is furious, Teal'c looks baffled.

"But how could they be Jaffa and unmarked?" Dani asks. Jaffa children receive their first symbiotes at _prata_ , but they receive the mark saying whose property they are much earlier, between the ages of seven and eight.

"They could not be," Teal'c says.

"They _were!"_ Ish'ta insists.

"Well, why don't we all go look?" Cam says. "Clear this whole thing up? Find out who these folks are, and just what's going on here."

It's a reasonable suggestion. General Landry okays it. (Mostly, Dani thinks, to get Ish'ta out of the SGC.) They're going to go tomorrow, so Dani spends the rest of the 26th getting everything she can out of Ish'ta about every raid the Hak'tyl have done over the last several years. Later, she'll cross-check it with information from the other Free Jaffa sources she has on file (such as they are), and see if she can turn up any more raids by these Unmarked Jaffa. (Ish'ta doesn't have much use for the _Tau'ri_ , even though several of the Hak'tyl are on tretonin, but Teal'c's an important figure among the Jaffa, and Ish'ta wants to make a point by including him in the attack.) (Also, Dani's pretty sure they're dating.)

She spends the night in her on-Base quarters, thinking that this morning she woke up on the floor of a room in Cam's parents' house and tonight she's going to sleep a mile beneath the surface in a secret military base, and that ...pretty much sums up her life.

On the following day (the 27th) they and Ish'ta and SG-22 go to P9G-844 (the algorithm kicked out by their computers based on the symbols Ish'ta gives them). SG-22 holds the Gate, and the five of them (Ish'ta wants to confirm the location of the enemy before coming back with a full complement of Hak'tyl; Dani sees problems in their future, depending on how much General Landry wants them to meddle in Jaffa affairs) go walking through the woods, looking for the mysterious Jaffa raiders.

Nothing.

Not even tracks.

Then suddenly—between one moment and the next—staff weapons are going off everywhere, and they can't even see who's shooting at them. Cam shouts at them to retreat, and they do, and she thinks (not for the first time) that she _really_ needs a bigger gun, because Cam and Sammy are firing their P90s and Teal'c and Ish'ta are firing their staff-weapons, and she hasn't even bothered to draw her Beretta, because _what would be the point?_

And they run back the way they came, and then the Gate is in sight, and SG-22 moves up to support them, and suddenly the enemy stops firing and a moment everybody stops firing.

For a moment Dani thinks that's a good thing (nobody's down) and she's starting to decide what she's going to say to General Landry to get him to do this over (preferably with added Marine units) and then Sammy says: "Where's Cam?"

He isn't with them.

She starts back the way she came, but Teal'c grabs her and says: "we will go together, Danielle Jackson," and they do, but he _isn't there._ They find a lot of expended shell casings, and a wounded Jaffa with no tattoo (they have a certain amount of difficulty keeping Ish'ta from simply killing him, but they're going to need what he can tell them), but Cam isn't there, and there are tracks—tracks of a lot of Jaffa, eight or nine, Teal'c says—and Cam is with them, and they follow them.

But then the tracks just stop beside a marker stone, and Cam's tracks stop too.

He isn't here.

They circle back to the Gate, and send the wounded Jaffa back to the SGC, and keep searching. She and Teal'c and Ish'ta follow the footprints again, putting down markers (because everybody doesn't have Teal'c's tracking abilities), while the SGC scrambles SAR teams (and Teal'c tries to talk Ish'ta out of going to get the rest of the Hak'tyl). This time Dani takes a closer look at the stone (because there's nothing else here, and here is where the tracks stop, and _where is Cam?_ ) There's carving on it. Ancient writing, which doesn't improve the situation in the least, because Ancient artifacts usually mean trouble. At least she can translate the writing, not that there's much of it. "Gateway to Enlightenment". It doesn't look much like a gateway at all. (Of course, "The Hall of Thor's Might" didn't look much like a hall, either.)

And she goes and gets Sammy, and Sammy looks at it and digs the MUSE out of her pack (Sammy says "MUSE" is for "MUlti-Spectrum Energy detection device", Cam's always called it a tricorder) and says the stele is radiating energy of some kind but she doesn't know what it does, and Dani doesn't know what it does either because "Gateway to Enlightenment" is all it says, and... 

And they don't find Cam.

The SGC sends a UAV through, and they send it up, but 844 is heavily-forested, and they probably aren't going to see much. The tac-channel is full of chatter as the searchers clear each section of the search grid. Nothing here but rocks and trees and bushes (and birds and squirrels and deer fleeing noisily). Dani tunes it out, walking aimlessly toward the widening perimeter. SG-3, SG-5, and SG-22 are securing the area so a civilian Science Team can come through to get to work on the stele. Teal'c and Ish'ta are trying to find more tracks. Sammy is operating the UAV. There's nothing for her to do, really, but stay out of the way. 

And she's thinking about losing Jack on Edora, and losing Jack through the Furling gateway, and the thing with the Tollen Curia which was nothing like that but had felt like it at the time. And she thinks that only three days ago she said 'yes' to Cam and now he's gone, and she's probably never going to see him again, because people never simply vanish for good reasons, only bad ones, and it never happened while she was saying 'no,' only once she said 'yes,' and the irony of it all strikes her as so supremely funny that she starts to laugh and just can't stop.

At least she's more or less by herself. 

She laughs until she can't breathe, holding her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound, holding onto a tree to keep herself upright. And Sgt. Raimi (SG-22) comes along and asks her if she's all right, and she waves him off. Even if she were willing to explain, she doesn't think he'd understand.

They search until nightfall. The UAV finds nothing. They're all ordered home, of course; 844 is too dangerous to set up camp on. They'll come back tomorrow. They aren't giving up.

Not yet.

Neither _Daedalus_ nor _Odyssey_ is immediately available to do an orbital scan of 844, or of the moons in the system. They were supposed to have a third ship by now, but they'd been forced to give it to the Russians in exchange for their Stargate. So the ship that had been supposed to become the _Apollo_ is now the _Koralev_. But at least they actually own their own Stargate now.

Ish'ta's been convinced to leave the heavy lifting to the _Tau'ri_ for the moment; she goes from 844 back to the Hak'tyl, demanding that they tell her anything they find out (as she still wants to murder their unknown assailants, and at the moment, Dani is more than willing to honor her wishes), and the rest of them go back to the SGC to debrief. Dr. Brightman says their captured Jaffa is still unconscious, but he's survived surgery and might be able to tell them something when he wakes up, and Sammy looks grave and worried and Teal'c looks grim, and Dani's doing her best to keep the laughter tamped down deep, because _didn't you know, didn't you all know, didn't you always know this was the way it was going to end?_

After the debrief Sammy asks her if she wants to come home with her for the night, and she doesn't. Cassie's still there anyway; a graceful out. And driving home, toward a house where she spent a year standing guard over a dead man's possessions, she realizes she can't do that again. She can't. At least there's a place to send Cam's things. As soon as possible, they'll pack everything up and ship it back to his family. 

And she realizes she's assuming that Cam is dead, and she begins to cry. Laughing and crying and thank god the way home is short and all back roads, because she gets there alive.

_He isn't dead,_ she tells herself. She doesn't think he's dead. She doesn't. She won't give up on him. Not until she sees his _body._ She just can't do all the rest of it again. The housekeeping and the daily chores and one more damned set of anonymous storage lockers.

She really can't.

She manages to get the garage door open and pull inside. And she sits in there, in the dark, in the cold, knowing that she was wrong, wrong, wrong again. She thought ... not that she didn't have anything left to lose, because you always do, but that she couldn't go any crazier. And apparently she can. And everyone says that personal relationships are supposed to be so healthy, well, she thinks this one may kill her.

She finally forces herself to go inside, and the phone's ringing. She doesn't think it's important—it's her landline, not her cell, but by habit she pulls out her cell to check, and it's switched off. That's right. She turned it off on the plane yesterday and never turned it on again.

The phone cycles through to message, and it's Sammy, so Dani picks up. "What?" she says, and her voice sounds hoarse and clogged. As if she's been crying (which in fact she has; sue her).

"I just wanted to see if you'd gotten home all right," Sammy says, and she just sounds tired. Probably because she knows all she has to look forward to is another couple of years of playing keepaway as they circle the body of SG-1's latest commander. _Dead commander,_ Dani's mind supplies. Dead, or—worse—missing, and they'll just never know, he'll become another name on the chapel wall up on 14 with the letters "MIA" after his name...

And it occurs to Dani (unwelcome epiphany; there's a time and a place for empathy and she'd rather it wasn't now), that Sammy's as tired of all this as she is.

"He isn't dead," Dani whispers in self rebuke, clutching the phone as if it's a weapon. She closes her eyes, and they burn as if she's been crying for hours (months, years). She says the words, she swears she believes them, but belief takes faith, and that's something she's never had. Not when she's needed it most.

"We will find him," Sammy says firmly. "Dani. He survived Antarctica. Wherever he is now, he'll survive this."

_Antarctica isn't lucky for SG-1._ Because she and Jack almost died together there once, and then once again (of Ancient plague), and Cam nearly died there on the mission that did (in the end) kill Jack. And Antarctica was what brought Cam to them _(to her)_ so maybe its curse has just taken a little longer to work on Cam. It took nearly two years to kill Jack, after all. In the end.

She nods, even though Sammy can't see her. "I just want him to come home," she says.

She's wanted a number of things, over the years. Success for various endeavors. Victory for the _Tau'ri._ Freedom for the victims of the _Goa'uld._ What she wants right now is for today to never have happened, for Cam to be here with her. She can't bear to either hope (for the best) or plan (for the worst.) Either is unbearable.

"So do I," Sammy says. "We'll start looking again in the morning."

#

And they do, but in different places. Sammy goes back with a Science Team to 844, Dani and Teal'c deal with their prisoner. He was wearing an armband. Ancient technology. An invisibility device. (That explains how they got ambushed, but it doesn't tell them where Cam is now.)

His name is Volnek. His people are the Sodan. He _is_ a Jaffa. Pouch, _prim'ta_ (ex- _prim'ta,_ since it's dead and he's on tretonin now), everything but the tattoo. Meaning—it has to—that he's never been the property of any _Goa'uld._

Born in freedom. Impossible. True.

Teal'c says the Jaffa have "always had the greatest respect for the warriors of the Sodan". Volnek isn't impressed, and he doesn't seem to feel he and Teal'c are on the same side. He implies that Cam has been taken alive—to be executed for trespassing on 'sacred ground.' He doesn't care (so he says) about being returned to his own people.

He won't tell them how to operate the Ancient "Gateway". He mentions operating codes (so it's got to be some kind of transporter) but announces he'll die before surrendering them. He won't tell them anything about his people, or how they've managed to escape _Goa'uld_ tyranny (apparently long before the current Jaffa rebellion).

He won't talk to her at all once he realizes she's a woman, and that behavior tells her something, at least. Teal'c hadn't recognized her the second time he'd seen her; she was wearing BDUs then. He'd thought she and Sammy were men, not necessarily because they looked particularly like men, but because, being where they were, doing what they did, they _had_ to be men; they simply couldn't be women. Volnek is from some equivalent background. He may never have served the _Goa'uld_ , but his ancestors did. Once.

(Afterward, Teal'c tells her all he knows about the Sodan, which isn't much: a legendary warrior caste, invincible and undefeated. And gone for a very long time. The Jaffa equivalent of the Spartans, pretty much. Which doesn't help a lot right now.)

Seventy-two hours pass. They keep searching. Invisible isn't intangible, after all; if Cam is within thirty miles of the Stargate (invisibly), they might trip over him. But they don't. He's somewhere outside their search area. Through the "Gateway to Enlightenment", and they can't get it to work, and Teal'c can't get Volnek to talk, even though now that he's on tretonin, Volnek needs to sleep, not _kel'no'reem_ , and they haven't told him that, are taking monstrous, stomach-turning advantage of that weakness. 

(She doesn't want to think that "Enlightenment" means "Ascension". It can't. Volnek is real, and the other Sodan were real, and they wouldn't have been hijacking shipments of symbiotes if they were ... Ascended. No. The Gateway is a gateway, and Cam's on the other side of it. He has to be. Out there somewhere. A prisoner. But alive, alive, _alive_ , trying to get back to them, hoping they'll come for him...)

To get to him they need what Volnek knows. And he won't talk, not with the interrogation methods they've used so far. (She thinks of the interrogation room the last time she was in it, of Vala, of _Cam_.) They need to do more, and she hates the fact she wants to. To do anything, anything it takes to get the information that they need before it's too late, because Volnek said the Sodan are going to execute Cam, and the clock's ticking, and she doesn't know how much time he has. She watches the (useless, one-sided monologue) interrogation from the observation room. When she talks to Teal'c afterward, she knows he can feel her need to make Volnek give up his secrets. (To make him _give her back Cam._ ) As First Prime of Apophis, he committed atrocities. He'd commit them now, if she asked. The security cameras would be easy to disable. The SFs would leave if she asked, she thinks. No one would hear Volnek screaming.

If she asked.

She won't ask.

There's always another way to approach a problem. (There has to be, because the alternative is unbearable.) If she can find out more about Volnek's people, maybe she can find something they can use to crack him. Or something they can use to crack the codes on the Ancient device. She asks Teal'c: who among his people will know the most about the history of the Jaffa? About who—and what—the Sodan are, and what happened to them after they vanished from Jaffa legend?

Teal'c isn't sure. He suggests that Master Bra'tac may know.

She receives permission to go to Chulak. (She thinks General Landry might be afraid to say "no". She wishes that wasn't a bright spot in her day.) On her way to the Gate Room she hears somebody wish someone else a "Happy New Year". She's lost track of time. Five days since Cam was taken; that's the only calendar she cares about now.

The Chulak Gate is guarded, but the Jaffa there recognize her uniform. The city is about five miles from the Gate; the guard leader (Hel'nac) says Master Bra'tac is there. They offer her an escort, but she declines. She knows the way (she's walked it as often in nightmares as in reality). Once Chulak was the throneworld of Apophis, and held one of the largest and most-advanced cities to be found under _Goa'uld_ rule. A place where hosts were collected, where the _Goa'uld_ came to Choose. Chulak was where she lost Skaara to Klorel. They killed Klorel (but not Skaara). They killed Apophis first, host and _Goa'uld_ together. (The host had been captive for centuries. She tries to convince herself it isn't self-serving exculpation to call his death a merciful release.)

With the death of Apophis, the chaos of liberation came to Chulak (Ra was dead, and no other System Lord would dare to claim the throneworld of Ra's brother), but then Klorel arrived to seize his "father's" possessions. And Klorel died, and no other _Goa'uld_ ever came to stake a new claim to Chulak (the 'gods' are as superstitious as their slaves, and believe Chulak to be unlucky for any who attempt to rule there). But by then, Chulak's Jaffa were wary of promises of liberation, and despite Bra'tac's urging, many of them fled for protection to the domains of other _Goa'uld_ , preferring the life they had always known, with all its hardship and abuse, to the terrors of the unknown. Only a few remained. Around them, the city is falling into ruin, palaces and temples destroyed, the great houses fallen into ruin. It's practically a ghost town now. The Jaffa who live here live in tents and pavilions. The great house awarded to Bra'tac by Apophis has become a command center to coordinate the preaching of the gospel of rebellion among the Jaffa. (Liberation theology without gods; a joke nobody will get but her.)

Bra'tac welcomes her; she knows she's lucky to find him here. He travels a great deal, seeking out the slave camps and prisons the _Goa'uld_ have made for their rebels. Seeking soldiers to fight for Jaffa freedom.

When she asks him about the history of the Jaffa, he laughs. "The Jaffa have no history, Danielle Jackson of the _Tau'ri._ The False Gods would never permit such a thing."

(The _Goa'uld_ , she knows, forbid many things. Teal'c could read and write when he came to Earth. His wife, Drey'auc, was illiterate. Literacy among the Jaffa is reserved for warriors and priestesses, not for breeders and laborers.)

"The False Gods forbid many things that the Jaffa have done," she answers. "No people is without history. I need to know yours."

"We have known each other for some time," he says. "And this is the first time you have asked."

"Now I need to know," she answers. (Another time she would be ashamed, because he's right; she should have asked, should have wondered, should have delighted in the chance to learn a culture and a history so divergent from her own. But she didn't think it was important enough, urgent enough, to make time for.) She tells him a little about 844 and why they went. Not everything, but he doesn't really expect that.

"Jaffa who do not bear the mark of any of the False Gods. Jaffa claiming the name of Sodan. I would not have believed it to be possible."

"I need to know how it _can_ be possible." She needs to make Volnek talk. She needs to find Cam.

Bra'tac tells her all he knows of the history of the Jaffa. It isn't much, though it's more than she's ever known before.

"Long ago, when Ra discovered the First World, he wished to have an invincible army. So he took humans from the First World to a place called Dakara, to create the first Jaffa to serve him and all his court."

Dakara. The planet holding the weapon Anubis wants. The thing he can't be let to gain (even if the sweeping eradication of all life in the galaxy via Ancient Weapon would probably be a fairly painless death).

"To make them strong, and as a symbol of their enslavement, he placed _prim'ta_ within each one of them, as a constant reminder that they could not survive without the False Gods," Bra'tac continues.

(Incubation in the pouch of a Jaffa is a necessary step in the lifecycle of a _Goa'uld_ , to improve the chances of successful implantation in its eventual human host. But that would hardly be a part of the myth.)

"From that ancient beginning to this modern day, the Jaffa have served the False Gods. Until now, our only hope of freedom has been in death, when we may escape slavery and reach Kheb, the place where all Jaffa may be free."

(Kheb, she knows, is, like the Christian Heaven, a myth. The Jaffa speak of it as if it has a physical reality, even though they also believe you only go there when you're dead. But they are a race which sprang forth full-blown into the midst of a highly-technological culture. Their myths reflect this uneasy rapprochement between dream and reality.)

She asks Bra'tac of past rebellions. Because surely there must have been some. If the Jaffa come from human origins (not really a surprise there) and were created after Ra discovered Earth, surely sometime in the last hundred millennia someone has tried to rebel. Bra'tac and Teal'c can't have been the first. 

Bra'tac regards her with a mixture of exasperation and pity. "Surely you cannot believe the _Goa'uld_ would allow the memory of such a thing to survive?" he asks.

"It _must_ survive," she answers. (Nothing of the host survives.) "Because somewhere, someone did." (The Sodan. Why do the Sodan vanish from Jaffa legend? Who were they?)

#

The name of P9G-844—its _real_ name—is Tok'Ishkur.

It's taken her eight days to discover this. She checks in with the SGC daily. They haven't found Cam. Volnek has given them nothing, though after six days without sleep they reduced him to raving in an ancient dialect Teal'c could barely understand. (Before Sally put a stop to it. Unfortunately he didn't rave about anything useful.)

But she knows who and what Volnek is, and where he came from.

Five thousand years ago, the _Goa'uld_ Ishkur (a _Goa'uld_ who'd taken the persona of a minor Sumerian storm god) possessed an elite commando unit. They were his personal guard. Nothing like them had been seen before and—for obvious reasons—nothing like them has been seen since. Ishkur trusted his Jaffa with too many of his intimate secrets, and his warriors—his Sodan Guard—repaid him by announcing that he was _not_ a god, and attempting to incite Ishkur's entire army to rise up against him. 

They failed, and they fled, vanishing without a trace. 

Except that there _were_ traces, of course. The Sodan would have raided. Did raid. For supplies, for new symbiotes (like the raid on which they encountered Ish'ta's people), possibly—even—for women. Probably, in fact, since, well, they're here now and it's five thousand years later. (And Ishkur has been dead for more than four millennia; no Jaffa anywhere bear his mark now.)

She has the story as it was passed down through fifty generations, from a Jaffa whose ancestor served in Ishkur's armies, who heard the words of a Jaffa named Jol'an, and did not rise up, fearing the vengeance of Ra, but passed the tale of that day to his sons, and they to their sons. The Sodan took a _ha'tak_ and fled, saying they were seeking Kheb. 

P9G-844 almost certainly isn't Kheb.

And there's nothing more to learn—discovering this much has taken her through half-a-dozen encampments of the Free Jaffa. It's all another dead end. As far as she can tell (seeing Teal'c with Volnek, from the stories she's heard; reading between the lines has always been her specialty), the Sodan hate the Jaffa and the _Goa'uld_ just about equally. They won't cooperate with anyone to destroy the _Goa'uld_. They just want to hide.

And Cam has been missing for thirteen days now, almost two weeks, and the IOA has ruled: three more days and then they're pulling the plug on the search. They say it's a waste of resources (Sammy told her that, the last time she checked in) and that means not asking the Russians for the loan of the _Korolev_ or being able to use _Odyssey_ or _Daedalus_ (when they're finally available) to scan the planet or its moons or the rest of the system. Too much time and money has already been spent. (Once upon a time, an international civilian commission wouldn't have been able to dictate policy to a US Military program. Times have changed.)

The Sodan, Dani thinks, won't be able to survive without their Stargate. It would take a while—years, really—but without a way to gain new symbiotes, they'd all die. The Gate itself would be nearly impossible to destroy, but the DHD is comparatively fragile. Pack enough C4 around the control crystals, set it off, and the DHD is gone. No way to dial out. (And Ish'ta will do it, Dani knows. All she has to do is explain, because Ish'ta wants revenge for her dead and safety for the survivors, and imprisoning the Sodan forever on Tok'Ishkur would give her both of those things...) She doesn't want to think these thoughts. Doesn't want to be the person who can. But she does. She is. 

So she goes back to the SGC, and after she makes her report, she goes to the cell in which Volnek is being held. He refuses to acknowledge her presence, but he can't keep from hearing her. She tells him everything she's learned. About the Sodan. About Tok'Ishkur. And yes, the Sodan feel betrayed by their Jaffa kindred, who did not rise up against the False Gods when they begged them to. But they have risen up _now_. And now, all who oppose the _Goa'uld_ need, more than ever, to set aside past differences and work together, because Anubis _will not care_ who did and didn't oppose him once he wins. He'll destroy everyone and everything that isn't actively serving him.

Volnek says nothing.

Her voice does not change as she slides from English—and where did the Sodan learn it, she wonders?—to his own language. The language of those who have claimed to be gods. She tells Volnek that the Sodan are cowards, they are women, that they have forgotten the faces of their fathers, that Kheb will refuse entry to their spirits. She promises him that his loins will wither, that his marrow will turn to ice and his blood to water, that his heart will become a stone within his chest, that the day of reckoning will come for him and for all the Sodan, and that they will be judged and found wanting, that she herself will enter the Hall of Truth and speak against them for their crimes and for their cowardice. And that she will be heard.

And still Volnek says nothing.

She leaves, because if she didn't, something would happen that someone would regret.

She leaves the Mountain, too. The world above is bright with January snow, and even in her heaviest coat, she shivers. She's numb with cold by the time she's cleared off her Jeep; she can't remember when she last drove it. Days. But Cam's Mustang is still there, the only car in the lot still covered in a heavy crust of snow. She clears it off; a ritual act, as if making it drivable will bring Cam here to drive it. Sammy has keys for it, she knows. They need to get it back to his place. Maybe tomorrow. 

She's shaking with cold when she finishes, and her hands are numb. It doesn't matter. She'll build a fire, she tells herself, when she gets home.

But she doesn't go home. She wants to, she means to, but instead she finds herself driving to Cam's apartment. 

She doesn't want to go in, but she does.

Doesn't want to put away the clean dishes in the dishwasher (someone else, maybe Sammy, has already mostly emptied the refrigerator; now Dani throws out the rest of its contents), tidy up the living room, check his answering machine for important messages, but she does. Somehow she can't stop herself. Cleaning and tidying and organizing and preparing the apartment for an eternal absence of Cam, because thirteen days ago he was captured by the xenophobic isolationist Sodan, and Volnek says the Sodan were going to kill him, and it's hard to keep hoping. (Not knowing is the worst part. Not knowing whether to hope or mourn.) 

The last thing they can do—the _only_ thing they can do, now—is send Volnek back to P9G-844 implanted with a locator chip, and hope they can trace the signal to the other side of the "Gateway to Enlightenment" in the time they have left. Hope that he isn't typical of the Sodan, that he'll report his experiences at the SGC with reasonable accuracy, that someone will _listen._

If she has to tell Cam's family that he's dead, what can she say? What lie will the SGC come up with that she'll have to endorse? There won't even be a body to bury.

Again.

The thought of that is too much. She curls up on the end of the couch, wrapping his Grandmother's Afghan around her, and stays there until dawn.

#

She drives into work in the morning automatically. She's done it exhausted, half-drugged, semi-conscious, even uncertain of her own identity. Even today, after a sleepless night, she has no difficulty. She goes down through all the checkpoints and sheds her civilian skin, and goes to her office at last. It's a Wednesday, another small mercy (she doesn't have to try to sit through a Monday Meeting without screaming). It's hard to concentrate, but there isn't as much of a backlog as she was afraid of; Nyan and Jonas are efficient. She's glad of that.

After an hour or so, she goes down to 19 and checks in with Sammy. They're still debating whether or not to implant Volnek with a locator chip. If it's something just under the skin, he could easily remove it, and undoubtedly will. A deeper implant—with the chip bonded to bone—would take time to heal before they released him—time the IOA won't give them. Either way, chipping him won't do much to gain his advocacy with the Sodan, something they're still hoping for. Even though it's the longest of long shots.

She sighs, and pushes up her glasses to rub her eyes. "When he gets back to 844, he's going to use the gateway. What area did we search with the UAV?"

"Over a two hundred mile radius around the Stargate," Sammy says.

"And didn't find anything," Dani says wearily. "So the only way we could follow the chip anyway would be if we had one of the 303s in orbit, right?"

"Right," Sammy says reluctantly. "But _Daedalus_ is on its way back from Pegasus in another week. They could divert then."

If they chipped Volnek and held him until _Daedalus_ is in range.

"And would we be allowed to follow up on its signal?" Dani asks. Sammy's face tells her all she needs to know. No. They wouldn't. 

She shakes her head. "If we mount cameras to cover the area around the stele, we might see the code he puts in to activate it. I think that's a better option."

Sammy nods. "I'll talk to the General."

Dani goes back to her desk. Out of her hands now. If they can get the code, they can follow Volnek back to where Cam is. They still have a little time before the IOA calls them off.

An hour later the klaxons go off. _Unscheduled Offworld Activation._

"Don't you want to see who it is?" Jonas asks.

"We have sixteen Teams offworld at the moment, Jonas. Any of them could be coming back early," she says wearily. But a moment later SG-1 is paged to the Gate Room, and she runs.

When she gets there, Cam is standing at the foot of the ramp.

Alive. Whole. Here.

The shock and the relief of it make her dizzy.

He looks at her and smiles.

And Sammy runs past her, and hugs him fiercely, and says, "Don't you _ever_ do that again! We were so worried about you!"

"Indeed. You gave us great cause for concern, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says severely.

"Hey," Cam says. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm a keeper."

He looks at her. "I threw out everything in your refrigerator," she says. "And your car battery's probably dead," she says. (Too stunned, too numb, too conscious of observers to say anything real.)

#

Volnek isn't as happy to see Cam alive as he ought to be, Dani thinks. (Not as happy as she is, but she doesn't trust that happiness now. It hurts too much—not for what it is, but for what it almost was instead—and she can't decide whether to surrender to it. It's not that she doesn't think it's worth it; it's her ability to withstand the pain that she doubts. She's always been reckless, but recklessness isn't bravery. Cam is the one who is brave; Cam is the one who has loved silently all these months and risked this pain every day of it. She isn't used to accepting second place in any contest (though this isn't a contest), but being best at being worst isn't something for anyone to take pride in. It isn't trying to decide how she feels that makes her dizzy. It's trying to figure out how to cope with it.)

Cam explains (for Volnek's benefit) that Jolan (Volnek's brother, and apparently, from context, the brains of the pair) not only trained him for the rite of _kel'shak'lo_ but helped him cheat. Between them, the two of them faked his death, then Jolan returned Cam to the Stargate. Apparently Jolan believes what Volnek refused to: that Anubis is enough of a threat that—perhaps—it's time for the Sodan to reconsider their isolationist ways. He doesn't lead the Sodan, but he can attempt to convince their leader, Lord Haikon, that Cam is right. Returning Volnek to them should be a point in their favor; Dani only hopes that when he tells Haikon that Cam is still alive (as he almost certainly will) it won't go too badly for Jolan.

They dial up 844 again and send Volnek through.

He doesn't look back.

#

Cam spends a couple of hours in the Infirmary getting completely checked over. Then comes the full debriefing, where they get chapter and verse about what he was doing for the last two weeks.

He was injured covering their retreat on 844 (fighting with Volnek, and Cam seems oddly relieved Volnek has survived). The Sodan found the two of them lying unconscious. They were certain, (when they saw the dying symbiote) that Volnek was as good as dead, so they left him behind but took Cam with them through the Gateway back to their village. There, Jolan nursed him back to life so that he could participate in the _kel'shak'lo_ , a fight to the death against any of Volnek's kindred who cared to challenge him. (His challenger would be Jolan, Volnek's brother, but Jolan didn't tell him that.)

For almost two weeks Jolan trained Cam in the Sodan fighting style. And Cam ... talked to Jolan. About the galaxy outside. The fight against the _Goa'uld_. The Free Jaffa. (And almost certainly, Dani thinks, about his grandmother, since Cam is pretty much incapable of having an important conversation about heartfelt issues without mentioning his family.) And at the end of that time, Jolan decided that Cam had earned the right to go home. So just before the _kel'shak'lo,_ he gave Cam a drug that would put him into a deathlike coma, deep enough to fool Haikon and the rest of the Sodan.

_Then_ Cam discovered that Jolan was Volnek's brother, the man he was going to have to fight.

"Let me tell you, that gave me a bad moment or two," Cam says. He shakes his head, smiling. "But it all worked out fine."

"Well done, Colonel Mitchell," the General says.

"I shall be most interested to learn more of this Sodan fighting style," Teal'c says. 

Cam looks much struck by the idea of actually being able to teach Teal'c something. The smile grows wider. "Happy to oblige."

There's so many things none of them will say around the conference table. It's the first time, Dani realizes, that they've almost lost Cam. Not in the usual way (when they're all in trouble together and are too busy trying to save themselves to pay attention to their statistically-probable and impending deaths), but in the worst way: all of them safe except him. It shouldn't be different this time. In the last eight years, they've been in this situation as often as not.

Maybe it's just her.

Even though it's only Wednesday, General Landry tells Cam not to come back until Monday. "And the rest of you too," he says, looking around the table. "I don't want to see any of you back here until you're all back here."

"Thank you, sir," Cam says, getting to his feet as General Landry rises. He glances at the rest of them once they're alone. "My place for dinner?" he asks.

Sammy grins at him. "Better go shopping first."

#

That evening at his apartment, none of them can stop touching him. Even Teal'c touches him, reassuring himself that Cam is here, is real. Back, alive, safe.

Tonight, unlike all other nights, Dani gets to her feet when Sammy and Teal'c leave. And Cam is on his feet too, but that's not unusual. He escorts the other two to the door—he always does; she's pretty sure he's incapable of letting a guest, letting company, however intimately a part of his personal world, find its way to his door unescorted, its departure unsignalized—and then turns back to her.

She's made up her mind. Avoiding pain isn't living. It's living death. If the world means to break her, she will live until the moment it does. (Though it remains to be seen whether she's particularly good at it; that's a problem to be grappled with another time.)

He smiles. She goes to him, certain, at least, of the first steps in this dance. Refusing to think her way through to the inevitable disappointment too much knowledge will bring. There is an implicit contract here, and she will honor it. She puts her arms around him; this much is honest and unforced. The desire to hold him and to be held.

"I want you in me," she whispers in his ear, holding him close. No poetic ambiguity, but then, no cause for confusion, either. This is precisely what she wants, though only part of what she wants. The part she knows she can have.

He huffs in surprise—at least she's whispered in his ear, loverlike to that extent—and the spill of warm breath against her neck makes her shiver. He leans in, kissing her neck, only a gentle brush of lips, and she turns her head, finding his mouth with hers, kissing him in the way she thought about for all the time he was gone, missing, lost perhaps forever, leaving her caught between living and following: _phoenix and pyre, incinerated together, leaving not a rack behind._

And he pulls back—not withdrawing, but bringing his hands up to cup her face, closer and farther all at the same time, because in all the times and ways he's touched her, he's never touched her quite like this.

And he says, sounding both content and amused, inviting her to share in a joke she can't quite understand: "Where's the fire? We got all night."

Not what she expected. When she kisses men like this, they don't start talking. But oh god, this isn't _'men.'_ It's Cam. "Um ... we do?" she answers, hoping for some clue. She doesn't think he'll reject her, not now that they've come this far, _gotten_ this far, but part of her braces herself for it anyway. Anything's possible.

"Come on. C'mere." And she expects the bedroom, but he leads her over to the couch instead. Sits her down and sits beside her, choreography of any night they gather here and she stays behind. But then he lifts her glasses gently from her face and sets them aside.

She's staring at him, and she knows she looks baffled; she can feel the expression on her face, and he's grinning at her like he's a kid who's been shown into the candy store and handed unlimited credit. He rests a fingertip on her lips, and says, "Close your eyes." And when she does—still puzzled; this isn't sex, and she's told him she wants that and he's certainly waited long enough, patiently enough, for the payoff—he cups her face in his hands once more and starts just brushing his thumbs over her cheekbones...

"What are you doing?" she demands. She opens her eyes, blinking hard; never good at following orders; never good at taking suggestions, either, and right now, in less than a minute, he's moved right outside her entire historical experience of physical intimacy. "No, I mean I know what you're _doing,_ but ... what are you _doing?_ Because, you know, um..." _We could already be in the bedroom: isn't that what you want? Isn't that love?_

"Shh," he says absently, as if he's concentrating on something else and can't be interrupted. "Been wanting to touch here for a really long time." Down the cheek, and over her lips—she closes her eyes again, belatedly obedient—and his hands are _radiating_ heat as if he's his own personal _furnace,_ and—she's really not sure why the pit of her stomach is fluttering like this, because all he's doing is touching her _face._

It's _incredibly_ intimate. She feels as if she's already naked, and they're still both sitting here fully dressed and he hasn't even touched her below the neck. She's not sure what the hell is going on. This isn't sex. This isn't even foreplay.

But oh, it's good.

"C-Cameron," she manages. It comes out more wavery than she'd like to admit and she can't believe she actually stammered (he came back from the dead this morning; that's her excuse). She'd like to duck her head, but her chin is resting against his palms; he's cradling her entire face in his hands. 

"Shh," he says again, still absently, but it's more amused this time. "Although, if you're gonna talk, don't think you really need to be that formal." 

And she's not panicking, she's _not,_ but Sammy never implied that Cameron Mitchell was a sexual deviant, and Dani wants him anyway, all of him, including this, and she really isn't sure what to do right now. She could push him back against the couch and straddle him and make him _do something_ —or even just do something _to_ him if he'd stop distracting her like this; she's good at sex, she knows she is, she's gotten very few complaints—but now he's let his fingertips trail down to the little space behind her ear and he's making a soft satisfied noise like he's just discovered evidence of cultural links between the Mayans and the Egyptians or something. (Is this what he wants? What if she doesn't have what he wants after all? Does it matter if she gives him everything if she doesn't give him that?)

"Okay," she says, feeling light-headed as his fingertips trail down the side of her neck, and she can feel her heart pounding the way it only ever has before when she was terrified (only she isn't—exactly—right now), and when his thumb comes to rest in the hollow of her throat she knows he can feel it too, _"Cam._ Aren't you going to—?" 

His hand trails back up her neck, fingernails this time, the lightest brushing, and she forgets what she was going to say. His hand cups the back of her head. "Slow and easy," he says. Explanation. Directive.

She feels a reflexive flare of rebellion. She's always been in control in sex: set the rules, set the stage—but he's touching her as assuredly if this moment has been inevitable from the first instant he saw her and as if he's been planning out what he'd do when he got here for all the months since. 

She rejects predestination and the thought of anyone else planning her future, whether she loves them or not. Love is a concept that still frightens her: love takes hostages (and hostages don't fare that well historically). But if this is what she gets out of all his months of deliberation, well, it's not as bad as it could be. Because his fingertips have found the knots that live at the base of her skull and are lightly drumming over them, coaxing them to relax, and he tips her face up again and when he kisses her it happens so slowly that she can't even tell the line between not-touching and touching.

If there were a demarcation point between here and there, between one state and the next, she could find a place and stand her ground, she thinks. She should say something: they should talk about this so she can figure out what's going on. She'd made up her mind to have sex with him (maybe even to admit to him she loves him if she can figure out how to do it without using the word), but _they're not doing that,_ and she doesn't know what they _are_ doing, so how can she know if she's doing it right? There's no ground—firm, middle, disputed—to stand on. There's only Cam, and he kisses as if it's the only thing he's ever done in his entire _life._ Screw the Air Force and the SGC: _this_ is obviously what Cameron Mitchell has made his life's work, because she feels as if she's dissolving, until there's no _'I'_ to wonder about the why and the how and the contradiction of social presentation strategies she's so carefully mapped out over the course of a lifetime. She's simply _here_.

She's never before been with someone who can (who would) make her the focus of his attention like this. He's not thinking about work, not thinking about taking out the trash, not even wondering what _she's_ thinking or whether she's enjoying herself or what she wants from him or what comes next. Because this act, this _action,_ is more of—an offering, one he has at last been permitted to make. Cameron Mitchell is kissing her, and by that kiss he is inviting her to take what she wants. Whatever she wants. And she could drown in this touch for days and never, she thinks, once feel guilt or pressure or hurry or the force of his expectation. It is consummation, but it is an end in itself. The still point.

_Oh,_ she thinks, _so that's what he meant, of course we've got all night..._

She doesn't notice when she puts her arms around him again, and she barely notices climbing into his lap—not to ravish him, not to hurry him, but just to _get closer to him._ Because that's what she wants. More of this. More of him.

She wants _Cam._ And he's here, and that's enough, and she isn't thinking past the moment any longer. He's tracing her collarbone with the faintest of touches and it's making her skin _sing._

She wanted him before she kissed him, but that was different. Claiming territory. Marking space. A transaction, clinical in a sense, relating to an emotional landscape but not a physical one, because sex has always been an intellectual exercise for her, and (because she loves him) she would give him this.

But now she wonders what it would be like to have him touch her all over, and more than wonders. _Wants._ Doesn't want this to stop, but ... wants that too. He's exotic in a way she never imagined: someone who's just _here_. That's the lesson he's been patiently waiting for her to learn, in all these long months. She's never been able to be just-here, but now, somehow, he makes it possible. Because if she can have anything that he has, anything that he offers, then what she will take is his absolute presence in this moment, and let everything else go.

And suddenly, somehow, this realization communicates itself to him, because the nature of his kiss changes. It's subtle, but she's used to listening for subtleties; she lives and sometimes dies by them, all the little half-understood bits of instinct she doesn't dare examine too closely. But this is somehow him saying: _yes, it's all right, we're all in this together; let's do this, then, and see what comes out of it._

( _"I won't let you fall."_ )

So different than what she'd imagined. Beyond anything she could ever have intended, because how could she intend the unimaginable?

She lets him fumble open her bra hook one-handed, without even taking off her shirt first; he's surprisingly deft at it. When she pulls back from the kiss—she's gaping at him again, she _knows,_ but he doesn't seem to notice it, or mark it as strange—he gives her one of those smiles again, as if he's inviting her in on the secret, as if it's the two of them against the world and they might as well figure it all out together.

And it's all right. This isn't something she's doing to him, or he's doing to her. It's something they're doing _together._

His hand slides over her back, skin against skin, and it seems to her as if she can feel his pleasure in touching her. It's almost ... innocent. She struggles to find the words that will fit: if his kiss was a selfless offering, then his touch is equally without stipulation; something from which he derives contentment without demanding her complicity.

Then his hand moves down, across her side, across her ribs and up, with the same careful deliberation. His hand cups her breast, his fingers moving with care, without haste, pushing up the fabric of the loosened brassiere. His palm is warm against her skin, and then his thumb moves across her nipple and she gasps, pushing forward into the touch, her lips brushing his, inhaling his breath. She feels as if she's floating, dazed by too many sleepless nights before this, by what they're doing now, but his other hand is solid and assured against her back and he won't let her fall.

He'll never let her fall. (And she believes it, at last, absolutely, the way she believes in sunlight and her own heartbeat.)

She's trembling. Filled with _want,_ and she aches with it, but somehow that's all right, not something that needs to be analyzed or disputed or forced out of consciousness. And she wants to touch him—skin on skin—but nothing's exposed, nor easy to expose, so she brings her hands up, carefully, and strokes his neck, his face, the way he touched her. And he's so beautiful. His eyes close, and his head drops back against the back of the couch. And she can't stop touching him. She kisses his face, the corner of his mouth, wanting him and needing him.

_"Cam..."_ she whispers, her cheek pressed against his. And: _"Please..."_ and if she doesn't know what she's asking for now, she knows he will.

"Yes," he says, and he's urging her back, to be kissed, now, with an urgency that makes her clutch at his shoulders, because this, _this,_ is desire, and she's dazed with it, stunned and overwhelmed by it, and then he's standing, sliding her from his lap, steadying her and helping her to stand, and she clings to him, holding him, pressing herself against the heat of his body, breathing in his scent and nuzzling obliviously at the hollow of his throat, before he draws a deep breath (shaky, amused) and says, "C'mon."

Only a few short steps to the bedroom, and it would be could be might be enough to make her panic, except for the fact that she's realized, in the minute and a half it's taken her to get here, that now she gets to _have Cameron naked,_ and somehow that's more important than anything else. And when she turns to him, she knows he can tell, and he grins at her and catches her hands when she grabs for his belt, and he says "shoes," and she doesn't give a damn about his shoes, but he wrestles her gently over to the bed so he can sit down and take them off, and she bites him lightly on the back of the neck as he's bent over and he laughs. And she decides it's probably a good idea to take her shoes off too, because it's January, and that means she's wearing heavy lace-up hiking boots, and if she'd been planning this seduction more tactically, she'd have taken them off earlier in the evening, but she hadn't really been thinking that way.

When she looks up, he's taking off his shirt. And she just stares, transfixed, though certainly she's seen him naked and half-naked and in every state in-between; there are damned few secrets among an SG Team. But this is different. She reaches out and presses her hand, palm flat, over his dogtags, where they dangle just below his heart, pressing them into his skin. Without a word, he slips them off over his head, drops them to pool on the nightstand. Then he reaches for the hem of her shirts, peeling them off (flannel shirt, thermal t-shirt) together with brisk efficiency.

She pulls him to his feet, and this time it's skin on skin, even though they're still both half-dressed. Her breasts slide against his chest deliciously, and she realizes she's rubbing herself against him.

"C'mon, baby," Cam whispers. "C'mon." He pushes her away, but only far enough to be able to get at their pants—his, hers. It isn't that she isn't _interested_ in being naked, but he seems to be taking care of things, leaving her free just to touch.

He steps forward—out of his jeans—and the same motion makes her stumble backward, out of her khakis. She kicks them aside, holding onto him to keep her balance. He's holding onto her too, and his hands slide down her back, under the waistband of her underpants, skin to flesh. And it's shocking and it's welcome and it's like other times and it's like no other time and she's starting to tense up, to _think..._

And he slides one hand up her back, all the way to the nape of her neck, and says, "C'mon. You'll get cold."

He turns back the bedspread and blanket and coverlet, and the sheets are brilliantly white in the overhead light. She dives under the covers, pulling them up to her neck, squirming out of her underpants. He turns off the light, then crosses the room. A click, a soft pink glow: the absurd baroque lamp Teal'c gave him as a housewarming present; it's sitting on his dresser.

"Told you I wanted to savor it," Cam says, sliding into the bed beside her. Their clothes are scattered all over the floor, her underwear is abandoned somewhere beneath the covers at the foot of the bed, and the room is illuminated like a French brothel. 

It's perfect.

_He's_ perfect.

And she's expecting (really) to be pounced on, now, because ... naked in bed, and she knows he wants her. But all he does is smile, and ask if she's warm enough, and brush her hair back out of her face, tidying it, and she realizes (blinding insight: clarity) that yes, he wants her, but more than that, he wants her _here._ In his bed, in his life, not just at the edges of it, but in the center of it, and suddenly _she doesn't know what to do about that._ Because that isn't sex (she thinks—now—that she can handle the sex); that's _living._ And she's always been abysmally bad at dailyness.

And she opens her mouth to explain that she loves him, Cam, she does, but that's the part that isn't going to work, she needs to warn him, she doesn't want to disappoint him, and he just says, "Shhh," again, and brushes her lips with his thumb, and slides his hand around her head, cupping and cradling her skull in his palm, and kisses her again.

Lying here, naked and nearly naked (he's still wearing his shorts), there's so much skin to touch. This is his bed, and it's warm and smells of him, and she lets go of worry about the future, or the morning, or even about an hour from now, because he's kissing her with that sweet single-minded obsession again, and she's touching him everywhere she can reach. His fingers drift over her neck, and her collarbone, and her shoulder, mapping the skin as carefully as if it spoke of secret histories, covering her breast again and this time, as he shifts downward in the bed, kissing the side of her neck and the hollow of her throat and the sharp point of breastbone, anticipation of where his mouth is going makes her back arch and her hips buck. When his mouth closes over her nipple she digs her heels into the mattress and bears down against the embrace of a phantom lover, breathing raggedly, half a sob, and hearing the sounds she's making makes her whimper, and his hand moves down to her hip, stroking, soothing _(but it's so far from soothing),_ and he sucks and tongues and then nuzzles his way across her chest, seeking and finding the other nipple, and his breath spills hot over her skin and she has to imagine the sight of him because it's impossible to open her eyes, to raise her head, to look...

And there's something, oh, not missing _(because this is completion, is love, is coming home)_ but absent _(though this bed is unlike all other beds and cannot be weighed against them)_ but she cannot follow the thought to its source, because he's moving again, kneeling between her thighs, brushing his lips across her stomach, just below her breasts, just above her navel, and she understands his intention, but she can't wait any longer. This has to be _(over, begun)_ consummated now: she can no longer tolerate the state of being suspended between two conditions. She clutches at his shoulders; the skin is damp beneath her palms. _'Now,'_ is a word easily understood no matter what language it's spoken in, she thinks, she hopes. _'Now'_ and _'Please'_ and _'Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away...'_

And he raises his head, and meets her eyes, smiling, and nods just a little, and she knows he understands.

The _Kamasutram_ (more honored in the breech than the observance) is the most famous erotic manual no one has ever read. The title can be translated in a number of ways: Kama is the Hindu god of love; Sutra is often glossed as 'workbook.' The _Kamasutram_ describes sixty-four sexual positions; this, the first one listed (male superior), is the one used most often (by ninety percent of heterosexual couples, according to the Kinsey Report).

He moves back up her body, bracing himself on one hand as he works the waistband of his shorts down with the other, and he's rose-gold in the boudoir light, and it's not 'doing to' and 'done to,' but the two of them doing, together, and she smiles at the sight of him and at the thought of what they're about to do. Are doing. Have been doing.

And then, naked at last, holding himself, steadying himself, he moves forward. She raises her hips and feels the blunt unmistakable pressure as his body slides into hers, defining wetness and the ache of desire; opening her and filling her as their bodies join and settle belly-to-belly, and it's no empty phrase, stripped of meaning by casual—careless—use. It's truth. _Joined._ The sudden spike of pleasure— _touching pulling sucking radiating_ —makes her gasp in surprise. She wants this. Wants _him._

"Baby," Cam whispers, and his voice shakes. "Sweetheart. _Oh."_

The awe, the tenderness, in his voice brings tears to her eyes. He kisses her cheek, and her jaw, and the side of her neck, touching her with reverence, as if she were something precious, something pure.

And she believes what his touch tells her, because she trusts him. She has always trusted him.

And he moves—in her, with her—and she can't keep silent, can't keep still. He whispers words of encouragement: _yes, like that, come on, come for me, baby, Dani, sweetheart, love..._

And the world narrows to her body's obedient greed as she thrashes—body and body and even _'I'_ is gone, but she is protected, cherished, _safe_ —the sweet irresistable tension coils to the edge of pain and she gasps and wails and fights _(for, against)_ and she has no defenses against it, no barriers, and she doesn't want any. The pleasure fills her as irresistibly as water, soft and liquid, powerful and inexorable. It seems to go on forever—invasive and insistent as only pain has ever been before—shaking her, taking her apart. She doesn't even know whether or not he comes too (before, during, after, at all), and in bed she has always been paying attention to her partner's body and not her own, because sex has never before been about pleasure: it's a counter-irritant; a purely intellectual exercise. What she gets off on (has always gotten off on) is the manipulation of her partners and her own degradation.

Not now. 

Because this isn't sex, this is _making love._

He'd said it would be, the last time she lay naked in his bed.

Afterward, sleepy and dazed, she lies against him, head on his chest. His arms are around her, and she's listening to his heart beat. Her other partners never held her afterward, or if they did, it made her feel dirty: the wetness of overheated skin, the smells of sex. She wants those things now. From Cam. With Cam. Transformed as he has transformed her. Or perhaps only showing her the truth. Setting her free.

She can't speak. She has no language. She presses her lips to his skin, tasting salt and flesh. _Love,_ she thinks. Perhaps he knows.

And sleep, and sweet dreams, and oblivion.

#

In the morning there is a slow, soft, languorous awakening, and she thinks 'bed' and 'Cam' and stretches, still far from really awake. Every part of her, body and mind, feels soft and relaxed, as if the tension (the fear) she's been filled with for years (too many to number) has drained away. It feels almost like being drugged, but that's never been a pleasant sensation; everyone _says_ morphine is supposed to be so nice, but she's always regarded it as a chemical thug trying to force her into obedience.

She wonders if it's actually supposed to feel like this.

She's alone in the bed and her body aches, sweetly, with unfamiliar use, drawing her toward consciousness with the avidity of unfamiliar appetite. She flounders to the edge of the bed and drags herself into a sitting position, blinking as she looks around the room.

Her glasses are on the bedside table. She's sure—she's pretty sure—they weren't there last night. She puts them on, and the world springs into sharp focus. Her go-bag is on the floor beside the bed.

She gets to her feet—still a little wobbly with unexpended sleep—and picks it up, and goes into the bathroom.

Coming out—teeth brushed, face washed, minor ablutions; she wants a shower but at the moment she wants to see where Cam is slightly more—she surveys the bedroom. Their clothes are still scattered everywhere, dropped to the floor not so much in haste as in indifference. But he's turned the heat up a little farther than usual, she thinks, and it isn't necessary to bundle up this morning. She leans over with slow care and picks up his t-shirt, the grey one with the Air Force Academy logo. He wears it a lot.

She rubs it against her face. It's soft with age and wear, and his scent still clings to it. She pulls it on, and it hangs on her, coming down to the tops of her thighs. She smoothes it down, rubbing the fabric against her skin. She's covered, but barely. It's enough. She opens the bedroom door—not quite closed, but mostly—and walks out into the living room. No one there, but faint sounds from the kitchen. She follows them.

Cam's standing in the kitchen in nothing more than a pair of boxers and his dogtags, drinking coffee and staring out the window meditatively. Cam in daylight, in morning light, in an utterly prosaic, slightly shabby, rental-unit kitchen she's seen hundreds of time, and on Saturday mornings, too, after a night spent sleeping on his couch. (Something she first did a year ago—well, on his _floor_ —and fled, the next morning, driven by a combination of self-exasperation and inarticulate terror.) And she did not spend last night sleeping on his couch, and so she stops, standing there, slightly baffled by the _what comes next_ (not afraid; not now, not ever again, but confused).

He sets his cup down on the counter and crosses the kitchen to her and leans in to kiss her. She tilts her face up, putting a hand on his hip to steady herself—still not awake enough for talk—but to be kissed 'good morning,' while not entirely new, is something that hasn't been a part of her world for a very long time.

"Scrambled or over easy?" he asks. He's already moving away, emphasizing with every gesture that this is ordinary, is real, is how the world will be from now on. Special, but not exotic. He opens the cupboard and takes down another mug. Picks up the coffee pot to fill it.

"Eggs?" she asks. Oh, god, she's _starving._ "Cooked?" (Of course they'll be cooked, idiot.) "It doesn't matter." Because she can't manage to think clearly enough, just yet, to _discuss_ eggs, let alone imagine how she'd like them cooked.

He comes back to hand her the mug, wrapping his hands around hers, gently, to make sure she's really got a hold of it. Smiling at her. Taking care. She lifts the mug to her lips—both hands, it's heavy and it's full—and he reaches out, slowly, and smooths down her hair. His hand settles for a moment on the back of her neck, a gentle pressure.

"Everything'll still be here when you're up to talking, baby."

She ponders vaguely: should she be annoyed? Suspicious? All this _touching._ She decides not. "Coffee," she mutters, knowing he'll understand that what she means is: _another two cups will probably do it._

It's a nice big mug, too. Huge, really. She moves over to sit down at the dinette in the corner. The t-shirt rides up, and she knows she'll probably stick to the plastic seat when she gets up, but that's later.

She drinks coffee.

Cam is moving around the kitchen. Cooking. He pauses to turn up the radio—of course he has both a radio and a television in his kitchen, he _lives_ here—and music (unfamiliar, but she associates it with him. Something she knows he listens to? Probably) fills the kitchen.

He's really lovely to look at, she decides (all right to look now, because _wanting_ is over; they have now progressed to _having_.) The winter light is silvery and pale, but he's still out-of-season tanned from his visit to the Sodan. Wherever he actually was on that planet, the sun was bright: every year (two years now, two summers of Cam) his hair turns pale in the sun. Not much, a shade or two, but Sammy has teased him about secret trips to beauty salons. And it has that faintly-gilded look now.

She gulps coffee, nowhere near awake. He pauses in what he's doing—cartons and boxes out of the refrigerator, butter in the pan—to peer into the oven, then goes to make a fresh pot of coffee. He tops up her mug without asking—the last of the previous pot—and sets the sugar bowl and a spoon on the table, within easy reach.

He's singing along with the radio now, half under his breath. Something about sparkling angels and [a love so fine](http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-love-so-fine-lyrics-bruce-springsteen.html). _Me and my baby,_ he sings, and looks over at her, and grins. _Me and my baby._

And she smiles back, and contemplates, with dispassionate academic appraisal, all the possible reactions she _could_ be having right now: fear, and the need to leave, and all the possible things she might say to find herself the fastest way to get out of here—kitchen, situation— _gracefully,_ and if not gracefully, then quickly and in a way that would ensure she would never be in this position again.

And it is an academic exercise in all senses of the word, because this is where she belongs now, and if she doesn't quite understand the mechanics of the situation or yet entirely believe in the possibility that this can actually _happen,_ she is entirely certain that they are both things that will settle themselves. With time. Without her intercession.

This is freedom.

She hears the hiss and sizzle of cooking; he's poking at the pan with a spatula, carefully, arched away from it because, well, he's half naked and grease jumps. And something's starting to smell wonderful.

"That's not eggs," she says, which isn't quite what she meant to say. Her voice doesn't sound slurry exactly, but even she can hear the bedroom huskiness in it. "I mean, it's not all eggs. All of it isn't eggs." (Ooops. Brain not entirely on-line yet.) Still, she's sure it will make sense if she keeps shuffling the word order.

"If you're gonna make eggs, you gotta make home fries and bacon and sausage and biscuits, too," Cam says, as if it should be obvious to anyone. And it's true that there's been a year (nearly) of Saturday breakfasts here in Cam's kitchen, and she knows how he cooks, but ... she's getting biscuits?

"At this hour?" (Oh yeah. Lots more coffee needed.)

He glances up at the clock. "I think we can still squeak in breakfast if we hurry," he says, sounding amused. He's laughing, but it's not at her. He's just inviting her to be amused at her pre-coffee (inter-coffee) antics, the way he's amused by them.

And she is. Because...

He knows her well enough to know how she is in the morning. Knows to give her coffee and not expect sense. No mysteries here, nothing much else to discover: they've already been living together and sleeping together (in every other way) and they _know_ each other; all the secrets that would be painful or shameful or just plain illicit in some other context simply ... aren't.

"Bacon _and_ sausage?" (She's conscious. Really.)

"Didn't know which you'd want more this morning." The fresh coffee's brewed; he picks up a strip of bacon from the plate where it's draining, walks over and picks up the pot. Fills her cup again, and folds the bacon into her open mouth. She sucks on his thumb for a moment before he withdraws his hand.

The bacon is sweet and smoky and _nothing at all_ like the Commissary offering, which manages to be burnt and limp at the same time and tastes mostly of salt. And it reminds her (once again) that she's _hungry._ But breakfast is on the way, and meanwhile, there's coffee. (Another cup should probably drag her all the way to articulate conversation.)

She drinks, and frowns, and ponders. "This is my coffee," she says, which should be self-evident, but isn't what she means.

"Wondering when you'd notice," Cam says.

"You have my coffee." Sumatra Mandheling, and he _has_ to have ordered it on-line. She knows he prefers a lighter roast, so obviously he got this just for her. That's ... dementedly sweet. Which, well, sums Cam up pretty thoroughly.

"I have your coffee," Cam agrees solemnly. But he looks as if he's trying not to laugh, and, well, she thinks she'd better shut up now. While she's still ahead. (Or at least even.)

But: "Coffee's important," she says as if she's expecting him to argue with her. At least it's a marginally-coherent and contextually-appropriate sentence. (Oh, good, her brain _is_ working.)

"Coffee _is_ important," he agrees. He opens the oven and whisks out a tray of biscuits. "You stay right where you are," he says to her warningly. "They need to cool first."

She thinks of telling him that she might _starve to death at any moment,_ because the smell of bacon and sausage and biscuits and browning potatoes is making her mouth water as if she hasn't eaten for _weeks._ But now he's dishing up, scooping eggs and potatoes out of the pan and forking sausage and bacon onto the plates, and he picks up a couple of biscuits—two and two—and drops them onto the plates, sucking in air through his teeth (because yes, they're hot) and fanning his fingers in the air afterward.

And he brings the plates to the table, and silverware, and napkins and jam and butter and orange juice in glasses. The home fries are redolent of garlic and paprika and there's cinnamon and nutmeg in the eggs (she knows enough about cooking—barely—to have been doubtful of the wisdom of the idea the first time she saw him prepare them, but they're so good).

And then he sits down across from her—breakfast together—and it's hard to decide whether to start with a biscuit or the eggs, so she compromises with the bacon, and beneath the table, his bare feet slide across the floor and come to rest on top of hers. And she glances up quickly, but he's eating as if nothing else is going on at all, so she slides her feet out from under his and then rests them on top of his. She wins.

Only he slides his feet out from under hers, and puts them back on top.

So she does it again, while buttering biscuits, forking up eggs, drinking coffee. Playing footsie. (Something she intends to deny absolutely if she's ever asked.) And he's just so .... normal. Comfortable. Secure. What was once a point of curiosity, or even potential tragedy (because 'normal' isn't a thing that's a part of her life, or his as it is now, and rarely survives the Gate) is now a point of warmth and comfort. Everything about this is comfortable. And she doesn't exactly have anything to compare it to. She shuffles through her memories. (Nope. Nothing.) Is that odd? She supposes it's odd. She frowns.

"What?" He's looking at her and smiling.

"It just occurs to me that I've never done this before," she says.

"Now I _know_ you've eaten breakfast," he says.

She scowls momentarily; he knows damn well what she means. But his eyes are laughing at her, so she smiles back. "In your t-shirt? That's new."

And he smiles outright, just for a moment, before composing his face into an expression of mock concern. "I'm not getting that back, am I?" he says mournfully. 

She strokes the fabric. Implicit in the phrasing of the question is its resolution: he will give her the t-shirt. But it's time to play. She does her best to look guiltless. "I suppose we could discuss it. Set up the basis for negotiations. The usual."

"I might be willing to part with it. For a price." 

His toes slide up her calf, and she feels a twinge of anticipation-of-touch, down at the pit of her stomach. Because he _will_ touch her again. They both know it. And it's something to ... desire.

"Well, it all depends on how the talks go, doesn't it? First we establish a criterion of value, then proceed to determining whether exchanges of mutual benefit will take place," she says solemnly.

And that finally _does_ make him laugh out loud. "I see the coffee's working."

"Two cups," she says, holding it up. "Where did you find this? I have to get one." It's _enormous._

"Had 'em custom made by this potter out in Santa Fe, last time I was out there; had Momma dig 'em out and ship 'em up. I think I got her card around somewhere. I'll give you a set for your birthday. Don't think you'd want to wait for next Christmas."

"It's a long way away," she says. Not that her birthday's that close. She wonders if he'll notice if she just _steals_ this one. This is January, and her birthday is in July, and his casual remark opens up an entire vista of _future_ (future-with-Cam) that amazes her with the idea that she's actually looking forward to it. 

"You might be able to talk me into an early birthday present," he says.

And she slides her foot, with only a little awkwardness, along the side of his foot (toes knuckling over the sharp knob of anklebone) and up the side of his leg.

"Okay," she says. 

_Okay._

#

Breakfast is over, and on a day that wasn't this one, a Saturday following a Friday that was (that has become) the fixed punctuation in all their lives (oasis of sanity, touchstone of normalcy and grace), they'd be going back to her house so Cam could do his laundry. He has a tiny apartment, but despite that fact he always has more Saturday (weekend, free time, downtime) chores to do than she does, and on top of everything, there are the emergencies. Most of which, she's discovered over the last eighteen months, aren't 'at-the-Mountain' emergencies, though they're emergencies none the less and have to be dealt with. (Whether he's on medical leave, or 72, or not, because Cam is Cam, and the leader of SG-1, and the metaphoric allegorical buck has always stopped with SG-1's commander.)

But today (which is Thursday, she's keeping track, honest) there don't seem to be either chores or emergencies. With the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, he says that he guesses she might like a shower, and it's true that she would. She collects a second kiss (entitled to kiss him, now, to think about kissing him) and goes back to the bathroom. And a few minutes later (she's standing under the hot water) he comes in, and slides the door back a crack, and asks if there's room for two. She tells him that if he's going to wash in here he has to use her things, and he says that's fine, and slips off his shorts, and steps in.

She showers hotter than he does; he winces when the spray hits him, and she adjusts the temperature downward. He apologizes (though she really doesn't mind) and says that he's gotten in the habit (of tepid showers is implied): the SGC is the first post he's ever been on where you could actually shower as hot as you wanted for as long as you wanted.

"Apparently the cold showers are no longer necessary," she says, because, well, doing this? (She remembers the early years of the Program, how rigorously they were all being scrutinized: not just what they did, but who they were. And certainly who they...fucked.)

And Cam laughs, and offers to scrub her back.

She's familiar, certainly, with the theory of post-coital courtship behavior. She heard it discussed at tedious length during her college years, when (apparently) everyone who wasn't studying was fucking or possibly managing to do inordinate amounts of both. Bonding behavior; and a tedious waste of time as well as being actually boring, so she'd thought then.

But it is neither one now, and even if showering together is clumsy and inefficient, it's fun. Cam seems faintly surprised that her shampoo has no scent; she tells him that's part of the _point._

And coming out of the shower, and toweling each other off, and she realizes, halfway through leaning against his chest to try to get at his back with the towel (again, efficiency is not the point), that she doesn't have to censor every gesture around him anymore.

As she does with everyone. Even Sammy. Even Teal'c. Because girls don't touch girls that way (they told her a long time ago) and if a girl touches a boy that way, bad things happen. Simplistic and illogical, but not entirely false; she had her first proofs of that hypothesis before she was in her first placement, and it was hard to unlearn every habit she'd grown up with (hard, too, to think of these noisy rude distant people—Americans—as hers), but by the time she had her BAs, it was second nature. _Don't touch._

And Abydos was like coming home, and then she left and had to learn 'proper behavior' all over again, in a new American subculture even less tactile than the academic (civilian) one whose cues she'd already internalized. _Don't touch._

But it's all right now. She can touch Cam, so long as she remembers never to do it where anyone (in a uniform, anyway) can see. He likes to be touched, he likes to touch, and the only thing that strikes her as at all odd about it is that he's managed to retain this behavioral preference even after being thoroughly socialized into the military subculture. But, well, she's met his family.

Back to the bedroom. Back to the bed. Clean sheets: that's what took him so long to join her in the shower. And clean and warm and fed very nearly defines 'happiness' for her; she's spent enough time in the last ten years when most or all of these things weren't true to value them when she has them. And she has Cam besides, and part of her wonders if her-getting-him is what's going on here, or is it him-getting-her, and part of her knows that either turn of phrase creates a false dichotomy; in fact, they've wanted each other for a long time and now they both have what they want. It's oddly difficult to know what to do next, though. Permitted-expected-required; the words you use define how you can think about a thing. What she thinks is that she'd like to touch him, but it's oddly difficult to cross the chasm from _desire_ to _action._

It's harder to set aside twenty years of _carefulness_ than she imagines it will be.

But he settles in to the bed beside her, damp, (well mostly dry), his hair dark (darker) from the shower but not wet enough to drip. She didn't bother to put on her glasses coming out of the shower again, the humidity from her skin always fogs them, anyway. He combs his fingers through her hair (damp and tangled) and he smoothes it back, and smiles. And she knows that she always thought of him as being so physically demonstrative, and knows (now) that he always touched her far less than he wanted to. And what he wants to touch now, at last, when he can touch her anywhere, is (most of all; apparently) her face and her hands: public skin in this culture, always exposed. But to touch them is a more intimate gesture than to touch parts of the body that are nearly always covered: arms, shoulders, back. And, of course, they have more nerve endings: hands and face are sensitive.

And they're lying in bed, naked together, and they're holding hands, and it seems to her that this is, in its way, symbolic of everything that has gone before: all the evolutionary stages of a courtship scrambled together out of intuitive order.

But it's not all he wants, of course, nor all she wants. The man may have the patience of a saint (she's been sure of it, many times, over the past year and more), but he isn't _dead._

That he wants her carnally (from the Latin _carnalis,_ from the root word _carne,_ 'flesh') in addition to emotionally is a gift she won't reject. Is not, even in passing, tempted to reject, though she has often been accused of despising her body and its needs as an irrelevant distraction. It's true that she thinks of 'body' as less important than 'mind' and always has. And so often in her life, they've been at war with each other; her body wanting food or sleep or freedom from pain when she's wanted—needed—something else. That for once all of her, body and mind, wants the same thing at the same time is possibly the greatest gift he's given her. If it won't last, well, few things do. She has it now.

He slides his thigh between her legs. She pushes against it. A lovely sense of arousal without, somehow, urgency, even though she can feel that he's hard, his cock pushing against her belly.

She wants to give him what he wants. And she really has no idea of what that is, because sexual release is only a tiny part of it—not even (she thinks he thinks) the most important part. And normally the realization of her absolute incomprehension would fill her with shame, desperation, a crushing sense of failure, because she's _supposed_ to know, always _has_ to know (from the Old English _cnāwan_ , and the same root also provides the now-archaic 'ken'—surviving in modern use only in the phrase 'beyond our ken'—and 'cunning.'). It's her job, her function, the thing that defines her. Being the one who _knows._

But here (suddenly, amazingly) it is all right to be ignorant, unknowing, _incompetent_. If it is a sin, she has already been granted absolution and pardon. The only thing she must be now is honest.

In absolute truth, she has never been that. One lies, also, by omission, and she has left many things unsaid. The Ancient World believed in the magical power of words, that a thing was only truly brought into being if it was spoken aloud. And so she has kept silent. It has been her retreat, even in the midst of people. Her defense.

Hard to step outside of that now. Still...

"When did you...?" she asks. Her hand is on his skin, stroking, ribs to hip. She feels the faint distempered roughness of the scar there; souvenir of the staff-blast that wounded him on _Tok'Iskur_. His body is a landscape of scars; she's touched many of them. She'll see them all soon.

"Moment I met you," he answers. He leans over to kiss her shoulder.

"No." She thinks he hasn't understood the question. Not 'when did he decide he wanted to have sex with her,' but 'when did he fall in love?'

"Moment I met you," he repeats, and she realizes he _did_ understand the question she asked. Love at first sight.

"You hid it well," she says, and he just laughs, kissing her neck.

"You just weren't looking," he answers, and she knows that it's true. It was nothing she'd wanted to see. Even when she _did_ see it, it angered and terrified her.

"I, um, did. I mean, too." She just can't remember when it started. When he began to mean far more to her than she wanted him to—than she wanted _anyone_ to. "Not then, but... For a long time."

"I know," Cam says, and sighs contentedly. He strokes her back, and she leans her head against his chest. "'S why you were always trying to talk me into leaving. And one of the reasons I was never gonna. And baby, now we got that first frantic rush outta the way, you just lie back and let me touch you a while..."

"That was a rush?" she asks, only half joking. It took them a year and a half to get here.

And he smiles, and she smiles back.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Threats of torture. Implied mistreatment of a prisoner. This is the first of two chapters with an extended explicit sex scene.


	16. JANUARY 2007

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The SGC is ordered to acquire the Ancient Device on Dakara; Dani tries to deal with being happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings in endnotes.

Monday morning seems to take place on a different planet. One where everybody's happy, and sure, she knows _she's_ happy (this is what happiness is), but she's never believed it's commutative. Until now. 

In the Department Heads Meeting (Felger is there, looking both chastened and smug), she can't decide whether to look at Cam or not look at Cam (can't make up her mind whether it's more appropriate to acknowledge the New Normal or to come up with a new and hopefully functional cover story to deny it, at least on Levels 28-14), and General Landry says, "now that Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson have both returned to us," in a way indicating he's making a joke, and she distrusts General Landry's good moods even more than she distrusts the other benchmarks of her environment. (It's the middle of January and she hasn't gotten any substantial work done since before Thanksgiving.)

Status has returned to quo with the tacit presumption that Vala was responsible for their single leak, and therefore (with her identification, discrediting, and flight, something both she and Cam are doing their best to deny all knowledge of) Ba'al no longer has information on the SGC's day-to-day activities. The NID is poking around at its end of things (somebody cleared Felger's alien girlfriend in the first place, and it wasn't the SGC), and General Landry tells them they're getting a new full-time Security Officer to do ongoing in-house review (but that isn't as bad as the other things that could have happened). Not NID, for complex political reasons, but CIA. The new person will be here next week.

SG-1 has only one mission this week, and it isn't until Friday. (Their favorite, the initial planetary survey.) Teal'c should be back by then. He went to see Ish'ta on Thursday; while Earth has no further interest in the Sodan, Ish'ta still wants them dead. (Yeah, good luck with taking out the invisible teleporting ultimate warriors.) Dani hopes Teal'c can convince Ish'ta not to throw the Hak'tyl into an unwinnable fight: the Jaffa need them. The more System Lords Anubis kills, the more Jaffa are left without overlords. If they can't be brought into the Free Jaffa...

Then what?

"Dr. Jackson?"

She looks up. Everybody at the table is looking at her.

"We're still waiting for your final report on Khalek," General Landry says.

She finished the translation and the preliminary analysis before Christmas. She should have done this weeks ago. "Now?" she asks.

"If you wouldn't mind," General Landry says dryly.

"Well as you know, for the last several years, the _Goa'uld_ have been coming to realize they cannot rely on their Jaffa armies as they have in the past—"

The spark of rebellion that Master Bra'tac and Teal'c fanned into a flame has spread across the entire _Goa'uld_ Empire (helped, no doubt, by Anubis himself: every time a "god" dies, more Jaffa begin to doubt). In seeking out the truth about the Sodan, she's found out more about the galactic chessboard than anyone suspected (clearly they need do to less exploring and more talking to people in places they've already explored). And what she's learned has placed the pieces they already knew into context.

The _Goa'uld_ use the Jaffa to incubate their young. The Jaffa priesthood, at least up until a few years ago, had been responsible for the care and transportation of _prim'ta_ (in addition to a complicated and elaborate series of rituals revolving around the worship of whichever _Goa'uld_ was their particular master, something she'll probably never find out more about now, alas and dammit). Despite all this care and oversight, fewer (far fewer) than one in ten of the symbiotes implanted in a Jaffa pouch—and there are hundreds of thousands of Jaffa—survives to take a human host. Either the _Goa'uld_ don't want the competition, or they're worried about the geometric progression that would eventually leave them without new hosts, but their solution (aside from cannibalism, something she only saw once and has no idea of how entrenched it is in wider _Goa'uld_ culture) is, as it has been since the beginning of the Jaffa, a senseless, petty, extravagant, and wasteful form of war: not star wars, but ground combat. _Goa'uld_ warfare is a thing of foot soldiers, even cavalry, fighting to gain control of the surface of a planet while, in orbit, their masters' fleets (each _ha'tak_ with the power to destroy the entire planet) wait.

It's sport for the _Goa'uld_. It's life and death to the Jaffa. But fewer and fewer of them are willing to die, these days, for the entertainment of creatures they have come to suspect are neither gods nor all-powerful. The Jaffa (rumor has it, and this rumor is probably accurate) have become unreliable. The ship's crews, the Primes, are still loyal. The ground troops are ... not as loyal.

But _Goa'uld_ culture (adapting with glacial slowness) is still in love with the ground assault (it's difficult to take all the loser's things if you've turned them to radioactive ash). That's why Anubis created his Kull Warriors. Unstoppable, dependable, terrifying. Utterly loyal. And nearly all, after Tartarus, dead. Along with the Queen who spawned their symbiotes. But they were only a stopgap, anyway. (Because Anubis's endgame is total galactic annihilation, and he won't need infantry after that.)

"—Anubis was clearly attempting to perfect a new sort of soldier for his wars," she says. "Possibly one meant to serve as an advanced host. Khalek was the prototype of a new warrior caste; we know Anubis seems to have a greater understanding of Ancient technology than the other _Goa'uld_ , and based on what Dr. Hawwash told me—" (and it's going to be a cold day in Netu before Area 51 sends her the full findings, she bets, or even the autopsy results) "—Khalek, a clone, was physiologically similar to the Ancients." (And if she had more of the database, and if more of it was in a simple transposition code, she'd know why Anubis consistently referred to Khalek as having been "assembled", because if he wasn't a direct clone of some now-lost sample, who or what was he?)

"Do we have any reason to believe there are more Khaleks out there?" General Landry asks.

"We have no reason to believe 584 was his only research lab, or even his primary one," she says carefully. _How the hell should I know?_ "He clearly considered the experiment to be one it was desirable to isolate from any other experiments he might have been doing." And to keep people from going _to_ 584, but not from leaving it, another puzzle. "It seems clear that Khalek was aware not only of his own purpose, but of Anubis's plans. If there had been other Mashur-prototypes still out there, I have the impression he would have made a point of mentioning them, either to gain leverage, or just, you know... to gloat."

Or Anubis concealed them from Khalek because Anubis knew Khalek would react the same way any _Goa'uld_ would at discovering a rival. And this is all based on guesswork, and it's all she has.

General Landry doesn't look happy either, but at least the meeting is over.

#

The rest of the morning follows the usual pattern. Hand-feeding her department. At least it's January and everybody's going to focus again. (Only half her department are any form of Christian, but the American secular festival that runs from mid-November to January 2nd still manages to distract most of them. If the _Goa'uld_ really want to invade Earth with a good chance of finding nobody around to guard the door, they should do it on Black Friday.) It's a heavier schedule than usual, but most of it involves Marine and Survey Teams going back to places they had long-term scientific missions set up so they can see if it's safe to restart them. (The short answer is: probably about as safe as it ever was.) Fortunately the hard sciences aren't her problem, and the SGC is just as interested as it ever was in long-term archaeological, anthropological, or ethnographic studies, which is to say: not at all. The closest they ever got was Stan's team (and they still haven't managed to re-staff SG-9).

"You're in a good mood," Amelia says. (She doesn't need to assign anything to Amelia, who was in the meeting just to begin with, but she wants a break somewhere she'll be hard to track down.)

"I, um. The Sodan thing ended well," she says, because it seems more tactful than saying _We got Cam back alive._ She sets her cup down on a clear corner of Amelia's desk. It's full. (Several of Dani's specialists have contraband coffeemakers in their offices; hers didn't survive the first year of being called away by some emergency and forgetting to turn it off. She gave up somewhere around Year Two.)

Amelia smiles and plucks up a piece of paper from her inbox and waves it. "And here's more good news," she says. "Kiplinger quit."

Suzanne's gone? "When?"

"She asked for a transfer to Area 51 when she came back from Thanksgiving, but she changed her mind. Put in her resignation just before Christmas. The paperwork came through while you were offworld. So I took care of it."

Dani takes the paper and glances over it. "Why?" she asks.

"Do you care?" Amelia asks.

"Not a lot," Dani says. "But why ask for a transfer and then resign?" The transfer is easy enough to figure out. It's the only way she'd ever get out of GTO&T. But resigning is career death: it means a ten-year gap in her publication history. She'll be lucky to find a job at a community college.

Amelia smirks. "I think she didn't want to be any place you had the authority to nuke her."

"That wasn't me," Dani protests virtuously. "Did she tell you where she was going?" Suzanne has always gotten along with Amelia.

"Washington," Amelia says. "You know."

The IOA has been headhunting anyone the Program releases for several years now.

"Peachy."

Not quite all good news.

#

Nyan catches her on her way to lunch to tell her Graham told him that she has a meeting with General Landry at 1500. (Why General Landry couldn't just mention it in the morning meeting is beyond her; does he think it's a secret?) She figures the best way to remember it is to tell Cam and Sammy about it, which is how she finds out they're both going to be in the same meeting.

"So," Sammy asks, with a spurious air of innocence Dani instantly distrusts, "how was your time off?"

She doesn't dare look at Cam, and Sammy has an intermittent but still disconcerting ability to read Dani's mind. This leaves her staring rapturously in the direction of the steam table, which is... not that interesting.

Cam bumps her knee with his.

"Fine?" Dani suggests.

"I'd thought you might like to get out over the weekend," Sammy goes on remorselessly. "I stopped by the house on Saturday, but your car wasn't there. I went on over to Cam's, but nobody answered the door when I knocked."

Dani doesn't remember hearing anybody knock. And if Sammy was there, she would certainly have seen Dani's Jeep. Still parked next to Cam's Mustang, the way she left it Thursday night.

"Samantha Eileen," Cam says, drawing the syllables out (and Dani can hear the smile in his voice, even though she is determinedly not looking at either of them), "I _know_ you still got the key to my place. Next time, you just come on in."

"Not a chance," Sammy says. "I might be struck blind."

Cam laughs. That's enough to make Dani glare at Sammy instead of the Jell-O (and do her best to _kick him_ , but the angle's wrong). Sammy is clearly unfazed.

"We will talk about this _later_ ," Dani hisses at her. (Though what she's going to say escapes her at the moment, actually.)

"You might as well just put an—" Sammy begins, but Cam throws his napkin at her.

"Wonder what General Landry wants?" he says, as Sammy throws it back.

Dani frowns. "Top secret mission?"

Sammy snorts. Cam shakes his head. "I'm not going to be cleared for active duty until Wednesday. And you'd both have to juggle your departments."

Which would make it a not-very-secret top secret mission. "Unless it's Friday, and we're actually going somewhere else," Dani says.

"So long as it's through the Gate, I'm fine with it," Cam says. "We get into too much trouble on Earth."

"We get into too much trouble _anywhere_ ," Sammy says.

"Momma says I got a gift for it," Cam says proudly.

#

"We need to put Anubis to bed," General Landry says firmly.

She's in the middle of drinking (and thinking about waking up next to Cam this morning, and where will she sleep tonight?) and the sudden mental image makes her start coughing.

"Yes, sir, we do that," Cam agrees. Sammy slides a helpful glass of ice water across the conference table.

"Any ideas?" General Landry asks. "How sure are we Anubis isn't dead?"

"Khalek thought he was still alive," Dani says cautiously. "Although he'd been told he was dead."

"Wishful thinking?" Cam asks. (They were over this a month ago, but clearly General Landry is going somewhere with this now.)

"Two possibilities," she answers. "Three, actually. One, Khalek knew Anubis was alive because Anubis had been back to 584 after we blew up Tartarus, but the timing on that doesn't work very well. If Anubis was there and survived, he'd have to have gotten from Tartarus to 584 before we did—"

"By ship it would be difficult—if not impossible—for him to have beaten us there from Tartarus, even by my estimate of the speed at which Anubis's modified _ha'taks_ can travel," Sammy says. "And I got a good look at the DHD's memory while we were on 584. Nobody but us had used it since the last time the Correlative Update program ran, and that was back in 2003, when the modified Avenger virus locked down the entire Gate system. So he couldn't have gone to 584 by Gate, at least not recently."

"Two," Dani says (the pause for Sammy's footnotes has become second nature over the years), "Khalek identified himself so completely with Anubis that he considered Anubis to be alive so long as he was alive. He seemed to possess Anubis's memories, either in whole or in part, but he spoke of Anubis as a separate entity..."

"Three?" General Landry says, as she stops.

"That he read my mind, knew about Tartarus, and knew blowing up Tartarus wouldn't kill Anubis."

General Landry doesn't like that any better than she does. "Are you sure he read your mind, Dr. Jackson?"

"Positive," she answers without hesitation. "His telepathy was clearly limited by distance—he wasn't aware of the preparations to evacuate the base, for example—so we can probably rule out a direct realtime link to Anubis. But he was touching me. I don't know if he could read anything deeper than my surface thoughts, but I'd just come from briefing the IOA on the Tartarus mission. So... maybe." _Maybe he got the details about the Tartarus mission from me,_ she means, but General Landry doesn't question how "positive" turns into "maybe". Which is nice, but a little unusual. (It makes her think he isn't listening very closely.)

"Then I suppose for our own peace of mind we need to assume Anubis is still alive," General Landry says. (Oh, good, somebody actually believes her.) "Especially with the additional information you brought regarding the location of this "Ancient Super Weapon". You mentioned Dakara in your report about the Sodan. Where is Dakara exactly, Dr. Jackson?"

"We don't know," she says. "Some of the Jaffa rebels may know the address; I can ask. It isn't somewhere we can go, though."

General Landry frowns at her.

"It's Ba'al's throneworld," she adds hastily. "As an ally of Anubis, he's still—"

"Fit as a fiddle and ready for love," Cam says. (He is not helping.)

"So Ba'al has the weapon," General Landry says.

"No, sir," Dani says. "I don't think he knows it's there." (Because Khalek said Ba'al needed to be distracted while Khalek remade the universe.)

"Why not?" General Landry is starting to become exasperated now.

"It's Ancient," Dani says. "Ancient technology doesn't react in the presence of _naquadaah_." (The Ancient Repositories ignored both Teal'c and Sammy—Teal'c, because he was Jaffa, Sammy because she'd been host to Jolinar and carried the _naquadaah_ marker of a former host. Something which Khalek didn't have.) "If he's found it at all, he'll probably assume it doesn't work. Jaffa legend says Dakara is where the first _prim'ta_ ceremony took place, but the Jaffa were created from humans, and the _Goa'uld_ didn't reach Earth and begin to take human hosts until about thirty thousand years ago. Long after the Ancients were... absent." Because she's starting to think they aren't as gone as all that. (She needs to get Sammy good and drunk and ask her about Orlin.) "So it isn't as if he came in and conquered a living civilization. All he would have found is Ancient ruins, if that. And I don't think the _Goa'uld_ are that interested in the history of anybody but the _Goa'uld_..."

Though they really should be.

"You've got that look again," Cam says.

"We've always assumed Earth was the Ancients' original home," Dani says. "But why would they set up the Antarctic outpost if it was their homeworld? Look," she says (momentarily forgetting who she's talking to, oh well), "what we know is this: there were Ancients, one of the Four Great Races. There was a plague that caused them to flee to Pegasus to escape it, one virulent enough to destroy all life everywhere. Despite which we're their descendants. Khalek says they used the machine on Dakara to create life: I think we need to entertain the possibility that Dakara, not Earth, was their original homeworld."

"So they beat feet for Pegasus and left the crockpot on," Cam says.

"And here we are," Dani says. "And I think it must be capable of destroying life as well as creating it, just as Khalek said. How else could they be sure of getting rid of the plague?"

General Landry has that "gaffed trout" expression again. He's never struck Dani as being particularly religious (not the way General Hammond is; she had to be careful what she said in briefings sometimes when it was him at the head of the table), but she's just told him that about four billion years ago, an advanced race of aliens (that look just like them, as far as they know) created life here on Earth. In their own image.

"Our galaxy is roughly thirteen billion years old," Sammy says. "The same age as the universe, give or take about thirty-seven billion years. Earth itself is only about four billion years old, but life could have appeared elsewhere in the universe as early as ten billion years ago. Plenty of time for the Ancients to have evolved independently of anything here on Earth."

(And so much for three out of four of the major world religions if both she and Sammy are right. At least Hinduism is still in the game.)

"Fascinating as this is," General Landry says heavily, "none of it is anything I can take to the President, the Joint Chiefs, or even the IOA to tell them we've solved the problem of Anubis or this Ancient weapon."

"Well," Dani says, "we could always ask Ba'al what we ought to do about it."

#

"He didn't like my idea," she complains. Telling Ba'al about the Dakara weapon would probably give him a good reason to keep it out of Anubis's hands. By destroying it, because that's what things like Ba'al do best.

They've regrouped in her office after the meeting. It's bigger than Sammy's is, and has fewer things that will randomly explode. And Cam's office is tiny, and in the middle of everything, and it only has two (uncomfortable) chairs. Which is why it's always hers.

"Oh, no," Cam says solemnly. "He thought it was a great idea. Really."

"But?" Dani asks suspiciously. He's teasing her, which she knows perfectly well, and it's an effort not to smile. She thinks of poking him in the ribs, but she's too far away. That seemed like a better idea five minutes ago than it does now.

"But he probably thinks that telling the _Goa'uld_ where they can get their hands on something that can wipe out all life in the galaxy isn't such a good idea," Sammy says.

"That's stupid," Dani says dismissively. She glances toward Sammy, who's making her pickle face; Sammy knows the things that weren't in her report (or Cam's either, since he's here and not facing courtsmartial) about Area 51 and Khalek. (But the unanswered question is: what did Vala do with what Dani told her?) "The _Goa'uld_ are alive. Why would they want to destroy themselves? I mean, other than Anubis, who's crazy, and—oh yeah—already trying to wipe out everyone else."

"Which, yes, has been the cornerstone of what we like to call our operational strategy for some little while now," Cam says. "Them against ... the other them. If the device on Dakara really does have just two settings, fine. But what if it doesn't?"

That actually hadn't occurred to her. If it was designed to seed new life throughout a plague-infested galaxy, it should have two settings: Sterilize and Create. That's only logical. Of course that would require _Earth Logic_ from a race that (as far as Dani has been able to tell) has exhibited no signs of it so far.

"But they already know it's there," she protests. "At least Anubis does. Because Khalek did."

"And this is why General Landry is probably kicking the problem up the food chain right now," Cam says.

"Just as long as nobody asks me to figure out the capabilities of something I've never seen that's located on a planet I've never been to," Sammy grumbles.

"How long you figure?" Cam asks, turning to her.

"Noon tomorrow," Dani says.

#

The last four days were great (were the way he wants life to be from now on, if the Universe cares about his opinion), but if there's one thing Cam knows better than his own name by now, it's that Little Miss can turn on a dime and give you nine cents' change. It isn't a take-back he's expecting from her, because she is honest and true and she's given him her heart and he knows what that means (to both of them). It's more the going forward, because he's been watching her all day, and she's been acting like a cat walking across fresh butter, and he's pretty certain she isn't quite sure what comes next.

Their meeting with General Landry ran till 1600, and it's 1630 by the time he and Sam stroll out of her office. And he knows there's a desk calling Sam's name the same way one's calling his, but instead of going down to 19 she goes on up to 14 with him.

"So," she says (coming in and closing the door), "you and Dani."

He sits down behind his desk (that won't save him if Sam decides to turf him, but a man can dream). There's no point in denying something as plain as day (even if Little Miss would like to pretend it's a deep dark secret, Cam suspects just about everybody in the Mountain's figured it out), so he says: "Me and Dani."

And Sam nods, and grins at him, and says: "She's going to have to admit it sometime. Or maybe I should just phone her around midnight and see how long it takes her to get to her phone."

"Now I just know you aren't the type to do something that cruel and heartless," Cam says solemnly. "Why, a person did something like that, she might find herself not invited to brunch come Sunday. Be a real shame to miss that Grand Marnier sauce. 'Bout the only way to dress up fresh fruit halfway decent, this time of year."

"Cameron Mitchell, you are an evil, evil man," she says. She reaches out and ruffles his hair. "I'll be there." She takes a step toward the door. "Just— Just don't let her get hurt, okay?"

She knows he'd never hurt Dani (intentionally, needlessly, because he's done it before and he'll probably do it again). But there's only one way he can hurt her the way Sam's thinking, and that's by dying.

"Do my best," he says.

It's all anyone can do.

#

It takes about twenty minutes after that for Cam to decide that his valuable input on ordinance and gear for field teams in non-combat situations (of which there are precisely none, since any mission can go hot), can wait until tomorrow (he can bury it under a set of evaluations he needs to get done and put it into a holding pattern behind his incisive thoughts about orientation scenarios and offworld training events) and by then, the clock's ticked over to 1700. Quitting time, end of shift, and no hurry, because Little Miss has probably found something to make her forget what time it is (as usual).

He hesitates in his office doorway for a moment, but... nope. No _Unscheduled Offworld Activation_. No Red Alert. No notification of a Security Breach, or a Situation in any color from Purple to Green. He's good to go.

When he gets down to her office, she's leaning back in her desk chair tossing a hacky sack into the air and catching it, looking thinky. The other two are on the desk.

"Time to go?" he asks.

"What about the Lucian Alliance?" she answers as she catches it, just as if they've been in the middle of a conversation.

They haven't heard much about the Space Mafia since Tegalus, and they've been having precisely no luck getting them to sit down at the table.

"I don't know," he says agreeably. "What about the Lucians?"

"Do you think they have a fleet big enough to take Dakara?" she answers (talking to the hacky sack she's holding). "Because we don't, and the Jaffa consider it a sacred site, and I don't know how many ships the _Tok'ra_ have."

"You planning to take Dakara by force?" he asks. After eight-some years, she's got a pretty good grasp of ground tactics, but military strategy is a little above her pay grade.

"I don't know," she answers. She leans forward in her chair as if she's about to get up, then she seems to notice the other two hacky sacks. She frowns at them. "If we take out the Dakara Weapon, what changes?"

"Anubis can't use it to destroy the galaxy," Cam answers. That much seems clear enough. You can't use what you don't have.

She sighs as she tries to stack the three hacky sacks (it doesn't work). "He can still destroy Earth."

"That he can. But you said it yourself: the more times one of the Bad Guys swings and misses, the more enemies he makes."

She cocks her head, studying him. "You think the destruction of Tartarus may trigger the formation of a coalition and cause opposition to the _Goa'uld_ , specifically Anubis and his allies, to reach a tipping point." It's phrased as a statement.

"I _think_ we aren't going to figure it out tonight," he says. "C'mon. Quitting time."

She nods, and gets to her feet.

#

They're standing outside the North Blast Door, waiting for the shuttlebus down to the parking lot. Missed the first one, and it isn't that long a walk, but Base Security gets a little itchy when it sees people in civilian clothes wandering around its secret top-security military base. He's cudgeling his brain for a tactful way of finding out where she intends to spend the night, when she blinks at him and asks: "Cam? Did I go home on Wednesday?"

Just then the Magic Schoolbus arrives, so they pull out their IDs, and board, and tell the driver which lot to drop them in. 

"You left work with me Wednesday," he says (has to think about it to be sure; Wednesday seems like another lifetime now). "We went to my place, then we went to the store, then we came back and I cooked..."

She groans faintly. "I haven't been home since the end of December."

"Your place first, I'm thinking?" he says.

"Yeah."

#

So he follows her home (one question halfway to answered), and they go inside, and she peers suspiciously for a moment at the (inactive) security system. And then she's looking at him, and he's pretty sure he's got a read on what she thinks should come next, so he takes a step forward and puts his arms around her. She slips her arms around him (under his jacket) and snuggles up with what sounds like a sigh of relief. "This is never going to work," she grumbles (pro forma protest) against his shoulder.

"Now, don't you go questioning my leadership abilities, now," he answers.

She snickers (warm puff of breath). "I'd say something about doing the impossible with nothing, but it isn't really applicable."

He knows the quote, though: _"We the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."_ If the SGC has an unofficial motto, should probably be that. The second half, anyway. They're all willing. More than.

He kisses the top of her head and reaches for her hand. Her fingers curl into his—he will never say that he doesn't love being able to love her all over, but somehow there's something special in being able to just take her hand—and rubs his thumb over the palm, holding it just for a moment, and then places it flat against his chest. He wonders what kind of memories this house holds for her. The ghosts it holds, and what she thinks they'd say if they could talk. "C'mon, let's go look at the disaster area." 

Her kitchen doesn't look as bad as it might (he thinks Sam may have had a hand in that), but a case of beer and two pints of ice cream isn't much to make dinner on, and there's nothing else here but a note from her service saying they've been in. It's clipped to the fridge door with a magnet in the shape of King Tut's head. (For a woman who thinks Indiana Jones is an affront to the good name and honor of her profession, she's got a lot of really tacky Egyptian knick-knacks.)

"Staring into your icebox isn't going to make food appear," he says.

"What if I stare into yours?" she says.

"Well, I suspect that might have better results," he allows gravely (he suspects her of doing her best to flirt with him, and he doesn't think she's had a lot of practice, but it makes him want to wrap her up in his arms and kiss her breathless all the same). And it's in for a penny, in for a pound, so he adds: "Do you want—" at the same time she's saying: "I'd like to—" and they both stop and look at each other for a moment.

"I want to sleep with you tonight," she says, careful and precise. "In your bed."

"Get your toothbrush," he answers.

#

She kisses him as soon as they step into his apartment, and it's 'hello', and 'welcome home', and 'I missed you', as if they haven't been in and out of each other's pockets all day, but a lot of what she does (who she is) depends (he's come to know) on _where_ she is, as if she's scattered parts of herself around like unfinished library books, picking up whichever one she's closest to and reading out of it. He can't entirely blame her, as compartmentalized as their lives are, but he's greedy enough to want there to be _them_ in all the spaces that aren't work spaces. They'll get there with time, he thinks, because they're winding each other up all through dinner. She's as hungry for touch as he is to touch her, and he's counting the hours until they have to put all this away and be Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Jackson again and finding them far too few.

And any morning they might see the sun and not the sunset, and the Good Lord knows that's as true for anyone alive as it is for them, but living in a war zone (and they are, they do) means it's a thing you think about the same was you wonder what's for lunch and if you've got enough clean underwear to last out the week without cheating. And so as soon as he sets the dishwasher to run, he takes her hand, and she leads him into the bedroom.

#

Their first time was the whole four-day weekend (they both slept a good half of it, between her sleep-debt and his recuperation from the Sodan version of Muscular Christianity), and it's second times that are awkward, because two points make a line, and a line means you're going somewhere. And both of them want that, but he's watched her second-guess herself all day about the 'how' of it. And there's just no way that won't seem like a bad thing to her: he asks and she delivers, no matter what it is, possible or not. She's always done her best to give him what he's asked no matter how much it hurts, and it doesn't matter whether he's asking it of her, or she's asking it of herself: she hates to fail even more than she hates to be wrong.

He remembers snatches of sidetracked right-angle conversations from what he thinks of (in a deep corner of his mind he isn't going to share just yet) as their honeymoon. When he said: _"Baby, you tell me if I'm ever doin' anything here you don't like,"_ and she answered (as if it should have been self-evident): _"You can do anything you want."_

But that isn't what he wants (for him, for _them_ , because sure, some men would think that was just _fine_ , getting free rein like that, but that's never been Cam's way. And she's so astonished (he can tell) by the whole concept of sex being an end in itself (instead of a means to an end) that he's pretty sure she has no idea of what she likes, or doesn't like, or wants more of (he doesn't need her security reviews or her confessions to figure out her sexual past; he's met Simon Gardner). Doesn't keep her from peeling right out of her clothes tonight and climbing into bed, looking at him expectantly. 

So he stretches out next to her (doesn't pull the blankets up, not yet, he wants to look) and props himself up on one elbow and strokes the back of his fingers along the line of her jaw. Down her neck. Smoothes his palm down over her shoulder and arm. Then back up, spreading his hand out over her chest just below the sharp points of the collarbone, resting it there a minute before sliding it down, over one soft breast, over ribs and belly, cupping her hip and sliding his thumb into the little hollow of the hipbone. One of the soft sweet spots on a woman's body; he's always liked the feel of it. 

She rolls to face him, putting her hand on his chest, stroking him the same way he touched her (imitation isn't flattery, it's communication), and she's watching her hand as it moves, and he can tell, from the dazed distant expression on her face that—just for an instant—she's managed somehow to forget he's even here at all; this is all about her, and what she's feeling, and that's just _fine._ Watching her touch him, even without _feeling_ her touch him, may just be one of the hottest things he's ever done in bed.

"I want to touch you," she says (a conscientious afterthought), her voice so low he can barely hear her, and he just can't imagine that nobody ever let her touch them like this, but ... maybe they didn't. "Do you...? Is...? I want to make you happy," she finally says, stumbling through the sentence as if it's an unfamiliar language.

"You do," he answers. She takes some time to think that one over, watching his face the whole time, but that's all right. There isn't anything on his face he doesn't want her to see. He wants to tell her it isn't about _doing_ , it's about _being_ , but he guesses that's another thing she'll need some time to figure out for herself. That's all right. They have time. 

"I can," she answers. (But the smallest words are the slipperiest, and he knows she's rewritten the conversation inside her head. She's still halfway stuck in old notions of bed being something for _him_ and not for _them._ )

Her hand moves on down; she rocks back a little, giving herself room to move, and about halfway down she shifts around, back of her hand against him instead of the palm—angle's a bitch, but half of sex is always the mechanics—and she's frowning just a little now, brows drawn together and mouth hanging open in concentration, but she gets where she's going. Slow, he suspects, for her—he's already figured out his baby girl is as goal-oriented in bed as any teenaged boy, and that's not as right as it could be, but she gets her hand around his cock (he's been ready for her since about halfway through the meatloaf and fried potatoes, but ready doesn't mean he sees a lot of need to rush), and squeezes, and her head's down, watching what she's doing, and he bites his lip—hard—as her thumb settles in right below the cockhead and makes one light circle before she strokes down the shaft.

And there's a feeling like all of a sudden somebody's sucked all the air out of the room, and he takes a deep breath. He puts a hand back on her hip, light-headed, and even so he can tell she's flushed, licking her lips, looking for all the world as if she's the one being touched and she might go off any second. And she's holding him, stroking him, and he doesn't want to come, not just yet. There's so much he wants to do first. To do, to be, to have... "Baby girl," he says, and he hears his voice, low and rough and husky. Warning. Pleading.

"Let me," she whispers, and she looks up at him, blushing and beautiful and _wanting._ And at least her hand has stopped moving, and she's gripping him hard enough so he thinks he won't come right this instant. And he's not quite sure what she wants, but her fist is pressing into his stomach hard enough so that he knows she means him to go over onto his back, so he does.

She lets go of him to kneel up and swing her leg across his hips, then takes hold of him again, sliding down onto him, and he feels heat and wetness and the silken clasp of muscle and concentrates on _not coming._ Her eyes are half-closed as she settles herself into position; she has a look on her face as if she's listening.

He puts his hands on her thighs and rocks his hips up at her. So good. And a thing he tried not to think about until they finally got here, because loving her was one thing, but wanting her was something that would have frightened her into fighting him harder than she did. He feels her clench around him again, and sets his mind to holding off, because he's not quite sure yet she'd let him do for her if he came first. 

He slides one hand up to the top of her thigh, strokes into her with his thumb. From the expression on her face—and the way she bears down into his touch—this is something new. He works his thumb back and forth, pressing, rubbing his knuckles against her, feeling her clench and tighten and squeeze, hearing her small strangled gasps and whimpers of surprise as she comes.

And oh god he's almost there; after that, he needs to come, desperately, and she digs her heel under his thigh and pushes. Not to get free, but to roll them both. And she presses up, and he slides deep and thrusts—once, twice—and comes.

Her arms are around him, legs tangled with his. He wants to push off—he knows he's heavy—but she says "no, no," when he tries and clutches him harder, so he stays where he is, riding out the aftershocks and feeling her panting against his neck. After another minute or so he raises up—she lets him this time—and kisses her. It's the best kind of kissing, he thinks: can't really go anywhere with it with both of them wrung out at the moment. Just kissing for its own sake. Nice. When they stop, she looks drowsily content. As if she's solved some kind of riddle in her mind (apples to oranges, cabbages to kings).

"There's ice cream," he says after a moment. "And leftover cake."

"Wasn't this dessert?" she answers. (Teasing, playing, he wonders how many people have ever seen this side of her, and if they valued it.) Then she yawns creakingly, stifling it against his shoulder. "Maybe later."

"Maybe later," he agrees. They've got all the time in the world. They've got the rest of their lives.

#

Tuesday is quiet (reports and briefings), and that evening Dani has an offsite interview (dinner) with the first of their potential replacements for Suzanne (the culture of Ancient Greece is more widely represented in Outer Space than you'd think) and by the time she finishes up (she doesn't think Dr. McLaughlin will be a good match for them, but he may be the best of the candidates they can clear, so she's polite), it's late enough that she (reluctantly) goes home instead of to Cam's. She builds a fire and starts coffee, then remembers to check her phone (muted for dinner and in the bottom of her bag anyway; if there were an emergency there's always her beeper). Cam called, and she calls him back.

"Wanted to see if you got in all right," he says. His voice is lazy. She thinks he must already be in bed, and tries not to _want._ She doesn't want to ask for too much. She isn't quite sure how this is supposed to go. (The last time she was in anything like a conventional relationship was over a decade ago, and she can't quite manage the leap of intuition that will let her imagine what he expects.)

"Didn't kill Mister Terribly Interested In Just What Sort of Position the Government Is Offering and You Haven't Published A Great Deal Lately," she says (she manages to forget what her reputation in Academia is like until she runs into someone who doesn't know anything else about her).

Cam snorts. "I'd say you oughta recruit my uncle, but it'd take high explosives to get him away from UT Austin."

Cam's uncle is Professor Alvin DeSaussure, a (former) colleague of David's. And of Catherine's, once upon a time. Her cover story had barely survived meeting him at Christmas. Of course he knew who she was. Apparently she's infamous. (Conversely, Catherine may have attempted to rehabilitate her reputation _in absentia_ ; that's always possible.)

"He's got tenure," she points out. "And besides, I've got Mesopotamia covered. I need Archaic Greece and the Sea Peoples." She can always use more Mesopotamian experts, but it isn't as if anybody's going to give her the budget to hire them.

"Well, that is a problem," Cam agrees gravely. They talk as she gets her coffee, and drinks it, and then he tells her to sleep well.

And the bed seems too large, and too empty, but she does.

Wednesday, Cam is over at the Academy Hospital all day (for an abbreviated version of the Quarterly Fitness Review) and Sammy comes up to her office at close of play to suggest dinner. And it's more than time for her to have what Cam would call a Come to Jesus with Sammy (Dani hasn't yet been able to localize the reference to her satisfaction), so she orders in Chinese from the good place that delivers (Sammy's bringing dessert). She texts Cam (she isn't sure whether it constitutes an invitation or a warning), but he says he's still in the hands of the hoodoo priests, so it's just the two of them. She manages to hold out against Sammy's immensely-sophisticated interrogation techniques (talk about the weather, Base gossip, no pointed questions) all the way to coffee and ice cream (with the brownies Sammy brought) before she cracks.

"Yes!" she says, apropos of nothing. "I'm sleeping with Cam now!"

"Good," Sammy says. "It took you long enough. You didn't think it was a secret, right? Because when Cam's getting laid on a regular basis he's kind of incapable of hiding the fact."

Dani stares at her, wondering who he's told.

"He gets this kind of ... glow..." Sammy goes on, all innocent reminiscence and helpful exposition. "Which was certainly in evidence Monday morning, when you hit the Changing Rooms in the same clothes you left in Wednesday night."

"I hate you, you know," Dani says conversationally. The teasing is ruthless, but not cruel. Relief, Dani thinks, as much as anything. It can't have been easy for Sammy, balancing loyalties and needs between old friends and older friends, military and civilian.

Sammy laughs. "And I am happy for you both," she says firmly. "And impressed with your powers of self-denial, of course. No, _seriously_. I don't think I've ever known anybody else who's held out so long against a nice, handsome, terrific guy who doesn't want anything in the world but to make them happy."

"It hasn't been that long," Dani grumbles. 

"Came down to my office his first day at the SGC and asked if you were seeing anyone," Sammy says remorselessly. 

_"Moment I met you,"_ Cam's voice whispers in her memory.

"He did not," Dani says.

"Did," Sammy says. 

"Didn't."

"Ask him."

"I will."

"You won't."

"Don't have to," Dani admits softly, and Sammy hugs her.

So they break out the Scotch and the vodka (a toast to making it through, even though it isn't either of their birthdays), and a little after that Cam calls. He sounds exhausted, but he says he passed ("And didn't even have to cheat much," he adds), and Sammy grabs the phone away from her and says: "Go home, Cam, and get some rest while I get your girlfriend drunk."

And she hears him laugh, and Sammy is smiling in a way Dani realizes she hasn't seen in a long time (even at Christmas), and he does, and Sammy doesn't (quite), but close enough that Dani makes up the guest room for her. (According to Sammy, she and Cam are announcing their relationship at brunch this Sunday; Dani makes a note.)

And that's Wednesday.

Dani decides she misses Cam enough to maybe start the weekend tomorrow.

#

On Thursday a lot of things (none of them particularly reassuring) happen all at once.

First is that their new Security Officer arrives, a week early. General Landry calls a special Department Heads meeting to introduce her, something marginally better than mustering the brigade (they did that when General Landry came) or a full General Meeting (funerals and some lockdowns). Her name is Kerry Johnson. She looks vaguely familiar. (Dani is wondering if there's a universal law called _The Conservation of Kiplinger Events_ , because Agent Johnson is skirted and high-heeled, painted and manicured and perfumed—she tries not to wrinkle her nose too obviously—and looks as if she belongs behind a desk in some corporate skyscraper somewhere.) (And if there were, would that mean she didn't need to get through two more interviews with possible new recruits for her department? Probably not.)

First General Landry says how pleased they are to have her join them and how he hopes everyone here will extend their full cooperation to her (Dani foresees Lunch With The General being more fun than usual this week). Then he turns the meeting over to Agent Johnson.

"I know some of you here at the SGC have had difficult experiences with outside oversight on other occasions," she says. "And I'm here to reassure all of you right now that I don't intend to be that guy. My job here is to coordinate and facilitate the smooth operation of the security procedures already in place at Stargate Command with those of Homeworld, the IOA, the NID, and such other agencies as may, from time to time, need to involve themselves in your day-to-day operation. If any of you—"

She's probably segueing into a request for questions (the only one Dani can think of is: "How can we make you go away?"), but that's when the klaxons go off for an Unscheduled Offworld Activation, and a moment later Walter says it's Teal'c.

And Dani gets to her feet (she really wants to talk to Teal'c), and General Landry makes a comment about "duty calling" which Dani takes as permission (since he hasn't told her to "sit _down_ , Doctor Jackson"), and she's out of the room before Agent Johnson can move on to the usual "think of me as a friend" and "my door is always open" that Dani's heard too many times before (it's always lies).

Teal'c is just handing over his staff weapon to the Armorer when she gets to the Gate Room floor. He's wearing Jaffa robes. She flings herself into his arms.

"Are you well, Danielle Jackson?" he asks, hugging her back. "And Colonel Mitchell as well?"

"Yes, fine," she says. "And he's all recertified and we're supposed to go out tomorrow and—" She looks up at the Conference Room window. Kerry Johnson is looking down. "—we've got a new bureaucrat, she came early, and—"

"Don't have to tell him everything in one breath," Cam says as he walks in (Sammy right behind him). "T. M'man. How you doin'?"

He reaches out and they clasp forearms. Teal'c inclines his head. "I am well, Colonel Mitchell. As are you."

"Never better," Cam agrees. The four of them start to move toward the west door; it's the longer route to the elevators, but the blast doors on the other side are closed (she's never really been able to figure out the rationale for when they're opened or closed, not in almost ten years).

"But I regret to say that I bring information of a disturbing nature," Teal'c adds.

"Can't be more disturbing than the CIA wanting to be our best friends," Cam says cheerfully. "New friends always means more paperwork."

Sammy leans over to murmur in her ear. "I believe the appropriate phrase is: 'back off, bitch, he's mine.'"

"They will never find your body," Dani answers.

#

"The Sodan have decided that Anubis poses a grave threat," Teal'c says, when they're all back in her office.

"Well," Cam says, "His name did come up a time or two while I was talking to Jolan."

"They have determined that he must be destroyed before he can gain the weapon on Dakara," Teal'c continues.

"Still not seeing a downside," Cam says.

"For that purpose, they have called for a summit meeting on a world known as Dar Eshkalon for the purpose of uniting the Free Jaffa under the leadership of Lord Haikon."

"Oh, that's going to go over well with the Hak'tyl," Dani mutters under her breath. "When?" she adds, a little louder. (And aren't the Sodan supposed to be the Isolationist Jaffa? Or did Cam actually change their minds? Volnek is going to need a hookup for tretonin unless he can manage to go back to a symbiote—if they have extras—and they don't even know if that's possible.)

"Soon," Teal'c says.

"But, Teal'c, I thought you were, um, spending time with Ish'ta while you were gone," Sammy says.

"Indeed I was, Colonel Carter," Teal'c says. "Though I have not yet been able to persuade her that the loss of her warriors was ... a misunderstanding."

"Because it wasn't," Dani mutters. The Sodan certainly meant to kill the Hak'tyl. They needed the _prim'ta_ , and so do the Hak'tyl. So does everyone, really, because manufacturing tretonin isn't a priority for Earth and the Jaffa don't have the resources to do it themselves.

"But before I returned to Earth, I stopped on Chulak, hoping to see Master Bra'tac, as I did. He informed me that Jolan had been there not many days previously, to bring him the word of Lord Haikon." Teal'c frowns very hard. "And to offer him the Rite of _Jomo Secu._ "

 _Jomo Secu._ The literal translation is "Follow Me", but what it means is a fight, sometimes to the death, to see who leads.

"But Master Bra'tac has led the Jaffa from the beginning," she protests. "Haikon can't just come in and take over!"

"He can if everybody agrees on it," Cam says. He's watching Teal'c closely. Teal'c nods.

"And so, hoping to convince Bra'tac of the wisdom of his own master's plan, Jolan of the Sodan confided it to him in detail, and he to me," Teal'c says. "The Sodan mean to strike at Dakara itself, and by that means lure Anubis into battle, hoping to defeat him."

"Hey," Cam says, "isn't that kind of like bombing the Vatican? I mean..."

"Dakara is a place sacred to all Jaffa," Teal'c agrees. "And so I—"

The phone rings.

"Hold that thought," Cam says, as she goes to answer it. It's Graham. He wants to remind her she has a lunch meeting with General Landry (they've been playing "synchronize the schedules" since Monday; they started out with twice a week and went to once a week but they've been catch-as-catch-can for a while, and she hasn't been around much lately). He tells her Agent Johnson will be sitting in, and that Agent Johnson would really like the chance to meet with her privately beforehand if possible.

"Where is she?" Dani asks.

"She's on 25," Graham says. "Shall I tell her you're on your way?"

"Half an hour," Dani says.

"Trouble?" Cam asks.

"Graham. Lunch." She sits down on the edge of her desk. "Do you know where Dakara is?" she asks Teal'c.

"I do," he says. "Though I have never been there."

Because Teal'c served Apophis, and so far as Dani knows, Ba'al never actually served anyone, until he allied himself with Anubis. It's unusual for someone who isn't a System Lord to hold as much power as Ba'al apparently does. Or did; she doesn't think there are many of the former System Lords left. Yu is gone now. Cronos, Apophis, Ra... all dead, and Anubis has accounted for Bastet, Kali, Morrigan, Olokun, Hekate, and dozens of Underlords as well. Ares, Zipacna, Heru-ur... The Goa'uld Empire is in ruins, its queens—Sekmet, Ereshkigal, Isis, Hathor, Amaunet—dead.

But Rome fell for centuries, and the Goa'uld Empire will probably fall for even longer. That's assuming Anubis doesn't wipe out everything. Or that some would-be god they've never heard of comes sweeping in to rebuild.

"What if the Jaffa take Dakara?" she asks.

Teal'c smiles. "Then all Jaffa, everywhere, will take it as a sign that the time of the False Gods is ended. They will rise up and claim their freedom."

"And if the Jaffa _can_ take Dakara away from Ba'al," Sammy says, "that would give us the window of opportunity we need to locate the Ancient device and neutralize it. If Anubis can't use it to remake the galaxy—"

"Then he isn't the Big Dog any more," Cam says, "and I don't know about you folks, but that sounds like a good thing to me," Cam says. "Do you think we could possibly hitch a ride to this Dar Escalon summit meeting of yours?"

"That is a matter of some delicacy," Teal'c says. "I believe we would be well advised to place our concerns before Master Bra'tac before making further plans."

"But this could work," Dani says excitedly. "We know Ba'al is playing his own game against Anubis. And we still have the vo'cuum Vala was using to talk to him. If—"

"You want to ask Ba'al for _help_?" Cam asks, sounding disbelieving.

"I'm not sure 'help' is exactly—"

"Knock knock?" 

Dani turns toward her office door. Agent Johnson is standing there. 

"Am I interrupting something?"

Lunch. Meet with Agent Johnson first. Ooops.

"Sorry," she says. "I was supposed to see you about something, wasn't I?"

"I know you're very busy, Dr. Jackson. It won't take long," Agent Johnson says, stepping back into the corridor. 

"Mind if I tag along?" Cam asks.

"This really won't take much of Dr. Jackson's time, Colonel," Agent Johnson answers (one of the many content-free phrases Dani has learned is properly translated as 'no'). "I don't want to interrupt your reunion with Sergeant Tilk—"

"Teal'c," she says, putting the glottal click on the end just to be annoying. Most Westerners can't pronounce it.

"'Teel-k,'" Agent Johnson repeats carefully (and still wrong).

Dani glances at her watch. It's 1030 now, and lunches with General Landry run from 1300 to 1430. Whatever Agent Johnson wants should be done soon enough for her to have a couple of hours between.

"We should prepare a briefing for General Landry," Sammy says.

"Don't do anything until I get back," Dani says. (Not that they could. But maybe this trumps another Planetary Survey mission.)

"Nothing you wouldn't do," Cam agrees.

#

"I wasn't ignoring you," Dani says as they walk. She doesn't quite understand what's going on. And whatever it is, it really can't be as important as the fact the Jaffa are priming for a civil war (since Haikon's plan is a good one—attack Dakara, kill Anubis—and he needs to be the leader of _all_ the Jaffa factions for it to work, and, well, she trusts Master Bra'tac a lot more and she bets a lot of other people do too). But she's burned all her bridges with the IOA, and the NID probably doesn't like her much right now either, so it's probably not a good idea to piss off the CIA. "Teal'c brought back some news from offworld."

"Anything important?" Agent Johnson asks.

"Maybe," Dani says warily. "I'm sorry, but I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to talk to you or not." (What she means is that she has no idea whether Agent Johnson is on their side, or just another kingmaking speedbump like the IOA, and she isn't going to give her any ammunition.)

"I'm sure we'll get the lines of communication sorted out fairly soon," Agent Johnson says. "I had a detailed conversation with Agent Barrett when I was assigned to the SGC. Up until now I've been liaising with Homeworld and the IOA. Mr. Woolsey speaks highly of you."

 _One of you is lying, you or Woolsey._ "That's nice," Dani says. She doesn't want to discuss the late ex-Vice President Kinsey's ex-attack dog with someone she knows so little about. "We weren't expecting you until next week, you know," Dani says. 

"Well, in light of the Dakara situation, the Director felt I should be on-site early," Agent Johnson says. 

Only there isn't a Dakara situation yet, because they only found out about the Dar Eskalon summit a few minutes ago, and there's no way Washington can know. Yet. 

They stop at the elevator. Agent Johnson swipes her card. Dani glances at it. The silver stripe means "All Access". It makes sense, if she's their new Security liaison, but it means Agent Johnson can go anywhere in the facility without an escort. It makes Dani faintly uneasy.

Down they go, another mark of imperial favor bestowed on their CIA Liaison. Level 28 is the Gate Room, 27 is Offworld Communications (aka the Control Room), and 26 is the Conference Room and General Landry's office (the Gate Room takes up most of the vertical space of those three levels; that's why anybody who doesn't need lab-space (like Cam and the rest of the Team Leaders) is exiled to 14; it's all offices.) Level 25 is the first full level (or last, depending on how you're counting), and half of it is dedicated to permanent and VIP quarters—and, according to Graham, Agent Johnson's office. It looks like they've converted one of the suites. (Which is enough trouble to go to that it looks like they're stuck with her, or someone like her, forever.) It's fancier than General Landry's. It looks a bit like General Hammond's in the Pentagon (aside from the lack of windows)—carpet, wood paneling, a desk, a "conversation group" in one corner and a round table with four chairs in another. There's a credenza against the back wall with a coffeemaker on it, a couple of empty bookshelves. No personal effects yet. 

"Come in," Agent Johnson says. "Sit down. May I offer you a cup of coffee?"

Dani shakes her head, sitting down across the desk from Agent Johnson. "You know," she says cautiously, "whatever you want, I'm either already providing it or I'm not the person you need to be talking to."

Agent Johnson reaches into a drawer and pulls out a file folder. NID, not SGC.

"Unfortunately, this concerns you directly. Agent Barrett would have come out, but since I was going to be on-site anyway, NID handed it off to us. This isn't really the way I wanted to begin our relationship. I'm afraid I have bad news."

Now Dani's really puzzled. Almost everybody she knows is here, and alive, and if this were something about (oh god please no) Cassie, it would be Sammy here and not her. "I'm sorry, Agent Johnson. I have no idea what you're talking about."

Agent Johnson pushes the file into the middle of the desk. "You knew Dr. Simon Gardner, am I correct, Dr. Jackson?"

"We were—" She stops. "'Knew'?"

"I'm sorry," Agent Johnson says. "He's dead. We haven't released the body, so no one has been notified, but according to the information we have on file for him... you need to be notified of any change in his situation."

She wonders who put that note in Simon's records. It isn't as if he's going to drive across the country to kidnap her again, now, is it? That was Osiris. She reaches for the file.

"Believe me, we all regret the unfortunate handling of the situation," Agent Johnson says.

"Probably not as much as Simon does," Dani mutters, flipping open the file.

Dead, Agent Johnson said. But "dead" would be simple and straightforward and clean. Hit by a bus, slipped in the bathtub, killed in a drive-by shooting. And that isn't how he died. 

Simon Gardner hanged himself in his detention cell sometime late Sunday night.

He was in "protective custody" (that lovely euphemism; it didn't protect him) after what the report calls "an attempt to leave the country" (Simon isn't allowed to travel without notifying the NID first and getting approval). He was picked up a few days after Christmas. (She wonders where she was. She wonders if he asked for her.)

They—whichever "they" it was—had been questioning him (both before and after detention) because in its enormous wisdom, the NID had decided _a former host was the likeliest person_ to be involved in Vala's espionage ring. Or Ba'al's espionage ring. Or whoever's espionage ring they decided it was.

She skims through the report, knowing Agent Johnson is watching her. There are pictures of the body. "So," Dani says brightly, "the NID's jackbooted thugs harassed a mentally-unstable victim of alien torture until all he could think of to do was run from them, then they arrested him and hounded him to suicide. But hey, look on the bright side. Maybe it was murder."

"I beg your pardon?"

Dani sighs, and skims the file back across the desk. "Who does our security checks?" she asks.

"The initial security review for SGC personnel is done by the Department of Defense," Agent Johnson says slowly.

"No," Dani says. "The ongoing one. You know: those monthly reports we all have to file about all the new people in our lives?" (Hers usually takes about ninety seconds; she's been submitting the same one for the last ten years.)

"The NID has been tasked with oversight for the Stargate Program since the 1980s." (When it was Project Giza.) "They'd be handling anything ongoing. Where are you going with this?" Agent Johnson asks.

"Oh, just wondering if you guys have finished cleaning house," Dani says. "Because somebody cleared Valerie Doran."

"The alien spy who escaped from Area 51 during the Khalek Incident," Agent Johnson says.

"'The alien spy who,'" Dani agrees. (Who Cam freed in exchange for her help against Khalek, but there's no need to go into details.)

Agent Johnson is staring at her now with an expression Dani can't quite read.

"Why would someone murder Dr. Gardner?" she finally says.

"I have no idea," Dani says. "Maybe they didn't. Or maybe they thought he knew something. It would have been a lot easier if they'd just poisoned him. Accidental overdose, who'd know? But finding out things like that isn't my job. It's yours. Have fun."

There's another long awkward pause. Agent Johnson picks up the file as if she suspects it might bite her. "You aren't what I expected," she says.

"I get that a lot," Dani answers. "Are we done?"

#

For a moment, getting on the elevator, she's sure she's going to keep going. Up and up and out and never stop, because movement implies purpose and she had one once and she isn't sure what she has now (as if Simon's death has stalled her forward momentum, and oh, a month ago, a year ago, Simon's death wouldn't even have been a blip on her emotional radar). But she doesn't. She stops on 14.

Cam is in his office with Teal'c. She can hear the easy rhythm of their voices (social conversation), even though 14 is one of the noisiest floors, especially when the Pit is full. The door is open. Nearly everybody on 14 keeps their doors open; the offices are small and (of course) windowless (and Cam says he didn't sign up for submarine duty, no matter what anyone says). It's all military up here: thirty-five Teams means thirty-five team leaders, just to start with (all of whom have offices), and then their (military) subordinates (who share offices in pairs, except the NCOs, who all share the big open space at the end of the corridor; its unofficial name is The Tiger Pit) and a few esoteric military support personnel (Dr. Crieche—their Chaplain—would be up here if she wasn't also one of Dani's specialists: Akkadian, Babylonian, cultures of the Fertile Crescent, excellent Aramaic, and madly in love with the Hittites). In theory, Teal'c has an office here (she thinks it's pretty much a supply closet these days); in practice, he's taken over a corner of the equipment room in the gym (on 25, in an uneasy alliance with VIP housing; the firing range is on 24) where he holds court when he isn't teaching the Offworld Weapons segment of GTO&T or giving lessons in Unarmed Combat. (It's where the permanent floating poker game usually resides—General Hammond always pretended he didn't know—and it's where the Betting Book—about which she hopes General Landry _really_ doesn't know—is kept. And probably even more illicit things, but being able to produce anything from bubblegum to nuclear warheads at a moment’s notice has saved their lives more than once.)

She steps inside and Cam gets to his feet. She moves toward him helplessly (sanctuary, sanity). "It isn't bad news," she hears herself saying. "Simon hanged himself on Sunday and Agent Barrett was supposed to notify me only Agent Johnson was coming out anyway and she says because of Dakara but I don't know what _she_ means, but..."

She runs out of words. Cam puts his hands on her arms just below the shoulders. She hears a click as Teal'c closes the door (from the inside, and she's grateful he's staying, grateful that there isn't another layer of secrets; she's had too many of those).

"Simon Gardner would not choose to end his own life," Teal'c says flatly.

When Teal'c says it, suddenly everything is so very clear. Simon was host to Osiris for four years, and they got him back, and they freed him (more or less) and he spent three months at Hotel California (the Program runs a little long-term care facility somewhere in Virginia for people who can't come back to the world or who need a really long custodial vacation for some other reason) and then he went back to Chicago with a list of terms and conditions and a psychiatrist who'd been read in and a whole medicine cabinet full of pills that can never (could never) give him back what Osiris took away. He was violent, erratic, unstable, and abusive (at least to her, but he'd managed to obsess Osiris with her and apparently the snake returned the favor), but he was never suicidal. Not even in the beginning, when it was worst, and the _Tok'ra_ who freed him hadn't been sure what would happen (because the _Tok'ra_ aftercare program for freed hosts really sucks; she isn't even sure they keep track of them) but had said there was a possibility he would try to kill himself (again, because it's the only way out for a host and some of them keep trying even after they're free), but he didn't.

"No," she says, leaning her forehead against Cam's chest. "He wouldn't." The NID might have driven him crazy, but Simon was always the type who (old joke, not funny), if he was going to go crazy, intended to take people with him.

"What happened?" Cam asks quietly.

"The NID badgered him on the theory he might be one of Ba'al's spies," she says. "They rattled him enough that he tried to bolt, which violated the terms of his parole, then they took him into 'protective custody', continued interrogating him, and..." She shrugs. "And somebody staged a suicide."

"And you think Ba'al still has people we don't know about."

She sighs and steps away, leaning a hip on his desk. She looks at Teal'c; an unspoken conversation. "People are stupid about the _Goa'uld_ , Cam. They think you can reason with them, or bargain with them. Dr. Weir thought we could negotiate with them. There are a lot of people who agree. Then there's the Trust. They see an opportunity to make a lot of money out of the technology we bring back. Only they want to go straight to the source. You know, bypass all our treaties and agreements and just _take_. We keep kicking them in the teeth, but..." But The Trust in its infinite variation is an Earth-based problem, and Stargate Command has no authority to meddle on its own home planet. The SGC is a military program, and the military is supposed to stay out of politics. "I don't even know who's supposed to be dealing with them. The NID is supposed to be watching _us._ "

"Well they lost that one," Cam says. "Because we've got CIA now, so NID's probably in the doghouse. You mention any of this to Agent Johnson?"

"I told her Simon was probably murdered," she says.

"Then she'll have her bosses turning over some rocks," Cam says. "None of the alphabets likes each other much." He looks unhappy. "Not that it helps matters, but there could be another reason Dr. Gardner was killed."

She glances at him, puzzled.

"You said they were questioning him. And I met the man, and I have a notion of just how he'd take that. So maybe they got a little rougher than they should have. And maybe they're just trying to cover that up."

It takes her a moment to unravel that, but she does. Torture. And either it killed him, or they killed him to conceal what they'd done. To keep him from telling.

And it's horrible, but she's a connoisseur of horrors by now. It's still better than an NID infested with _Goa'uld_ agents, or _Goa'uld_ sympathizers, or riddled with Trust.

"You always know just what to say to make me feel better," she says gravely, and it's a joke, and it's true. She takes a deep breath. "So. Dakara. Interestingly enough, Agent Johnson says she's here a week early because of Dakara, but I don't know what _she_ means by it. Or what she knows."

"More than she's telling, less than she should," Cam says, with an equal effort at lightness. "C'mon. Let's grab Sam and see if we can get a moment to tell General Landry about the Sodan business."

And the three of them walk out of Cam's office, and she thinks she ought to be feeling terrible right now—angry and despairing and wracked with guilt—and she doesn't. As if telling Cam is a form of absolution. And she will grieve for Simon and his maimed interrupted life, and its unwarranted termination. But it isn't her fault.

#

She really wants to see General Landry before lunch, so the meeting is shoehorned in to ten minutes stolen from other things, brief and telegraphic. The Sodan have decided to Do Something about Anubis. They intend to talk the Jaffa Free Nation (Bra'tac's group) and the rest of the Free Jaffa (various factions, including the Hak'tyl, good luck there) into helping them. There’s going to be a meeting of all the Free Jaffa factions (there's a lot more than one, and they all have different agendas) at a place called Dar Eshkalon. It could be peaceful. It could be the start of a civil war. Considering that the Sodan plan is to attack Dakara to lure Anubis to the battlefield, and for all the other factions to help them, probably not peaceful.

"Just how many people know about this Ancient weapon on Dakara, Dr. Jackson?" General Landry asks. 

It isn't the question she was expecting, and for an instant she can't imagine how to phrase her answer. Why does he think she knows these things?

"I guess that depends on how many people Anubis told, sir," Cam says innocently, giving her a moment to come up with something reasonably tactful. 

"The Sodan consider Anubis a major threat," Dani says carefully. "I don't know if it's because he's _Anubis_ , or because they know about the Dakara Device. Possibly Ishkur knew, and shared the information with them. We have no way of knowing." (And Dani has no idea how many people Vala's mentioned it to.)

General Landry glares at both of them in an even-handed distribution of resigned displeasure. "Well, if the Jaffa are planning to attack Dakara, I'd say we have a little problem on our hands. You see, I mentioned the fact that Ba'al is sitting on a weapon that can wipe out all life in the universe to the Pentagon, and they told me they would take it as a personal favor if I removed temptation from his path."

"You want us to invade Ba'al's throneworld, sir?" Sammy asks blankly.

"I am open to suggestion, Colonel," General Landry says. "Teal'c. I haven't heard from you, yet."

"Dakara is a place sacred to all Jaffa," Teal'c says.

"I want to see ideas on my desk by Monday," General Landry says. "Dismissed."

#

"Not like you to pass the buck, T," Cam says, when they leave the office.

"I have said nothing more than the truth, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c says.

"Could we?" Sammy asks. "Get to Dakara?"

"Getting off again is likely to be the problem," Cam says.

"Sodan cloaking devices," Dani says.

Cam looks at her, and then at Teal'c, and Teal'c raises an eyebrow in the way that indicates she hasn't made an entirely impossible suggestion, but Sammy's frowning.

"The Pentagon might be expecting us to bring it back," Sammy says.

#

Lunch is just as awkward as Dani thought it was going to be. Lunch is usually for either explaining Stargate Command to General Landry or for explaining Washington to him (and sometimes for General Landry to tell her things that she's meant to pass on to General Hammond in a totally deniable way; she isn't really comfortable with being the messenger, but on the other hand, General Landry is currently blocking the IOA from moving her department offsite for budgetary reasons, so she sort of owes him). And she really can't talk about either one with Kerry Johnson at the table.

China and silver, plates with their unit crest on them (who makes these things?), wine-glasses and waiters. There are three tables here, so the room can seat twelve, but she's never seen anyone else in here (though this is probably where the various IOA observers with whom they're randomly afflicted eat, since she never sees them in the mess). She knows the food served here isn't prepared in the kitchens that feed everyone else; after more than twenty years of academic and military life she's a connoisseur of what can survive steam table immolation and what can't. There's always a printed menu with a choice of beef and other-than-beef; today's other-than-beef is salmon, and she chooses it out of a spirit of scientific curiosity. At least the server knows by now not to offer her wine, but General Landry and Agent Johnson both have some. Agent Johnson orders the salmon too; General Landry (as always) has the beef.

With the preliminaries over, General Landry offers his sympathies for her loss (meaning Simon) and announces (just as if she isn't right there) that Agent Johnson has promised a full investigation (whatever that means).

"The NID's days may be numbered anyway," Agent Johnson says. "With the restructuring of the intelligence community under Home _land_ Security, a domestic intelligence organization for black program oversight is seen by many to be ... redundant. As well as—as has been amply demonstrated in the past—a soft conduit for undesirable leaks."

Espionage is just another form of bureaucracy—the secret police as an engine of state repression—and of course it has its own technical vocabulary. That doesn't mean Dani's fluent in this particular dialect. The common languages of tyrants and governments are designed to inhibit clarity, not provide it.

"The _Goa'uld_ and the Trust?" she asks.

"The Trust is, or has been, more or less on our side," Agent Johnson answers. "Though of course their actions have historically been extra-legal."

"Like the use of stolen alien technology to frame people for political assassinations?" Dani asks. General Landry frowns, but it's true, and they all know it.

"As I said this morning, I'm well aware of Stargate Command's difficult history with the intelligence community," Agent Johnson says (Dani awards her points for not rising to the bait). "But in light of recent policy decisions at the highest level, this isn't likely to be a problem for much longer. As you know, four years ago, the US Government made the decision to admit to something several other countries already suspected—"

"You're talking about the Stargate Treaty." Russia was already in the loop, of course, but they read in Britain, China, and France in 2003. By a year later, it had become the IOA, and it's been pushing its nose further into the tent every year since.

"Yes," Agent Johnson says. "Twelve current members, and there's a proposal to add six additional member nations by the end of this year. It's understood in Washington that the IOA feels, with some justification, the United States cannot be permitted to unilaterally take actions or set policies that affect the entire world."

"What Ms. Johnson is trying to tell you, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says, "is that President Hayes feels we can't keep the Program a secret much longer. "

"He wants to make the Program public," Dani says, working it out. And next year is an election year (she does keep track of some current events, especially if they're likely to affect her department's budget). "But only if he's re-elected. If he tells people about it now—"

General Landry snorts. "He won't have to worry about becoming a lame duck, because he'll be a dead duck."

"Regardless," Agent Johnson says, "while the IOA believes that an orderly transition of the program to civilian control is in everyone's interests, it is also fully sensible of the extensive amount of work necessary to prepare everyone for a disclosure of this magnitude."

 _'Civilian control.' Yeah, we tried that once. It didn't work._ "You're going to hand the Stargate over to the IOA," she says flatly. 

"The Central Intelligence Agency does not set national policy," Agent Johnson points out. "Our organizational function is to provide national security intelligence assessment and advice to senior United States policymakers."

"Who then set policy," General Landry says. "And orders come down from the top." He looks at her. "Colonel Davis is arriving this afternoon for an indefinite visit. Somehow, I think I know why."

To tell General Landry officially what Agent Johnson is telling him unofficially, that much seems clear. But with the Pentagon's particular spin, whatever it is. (She wonders if anybody's figured out yet that the first thing that will happen after the Program goes public is that Egypt will sue for the return of the Stargate. Probably not.)

"Right now the member governments of the IOA are still working out the preliminary details, but... yes. We can almost certainly expect the Stargate to pass to international control within the next five years," Agent Johnson says. 

"You aren't here to keep an eye on _us_ ," Dani says in sudden discovery. "You're here to keep an eye on _them._ "

General Landry gives Agent Johnson a smug look. Apparently he was betting she'd guess.

"In essence," Agent Johnson says, with a rueful smile. "You can expect to see a good deal more of the IOA over the next several months than you've been used to. Which brings us to... Dakara."

"I'm sure General Landry has already told you everything," Dani says. She'd really rather be somewhere else right now. Even if the salmon is turning out to be surprisingly edible. (It's true there's chocolate cake available for dessert, but Cam's is better and doesn't come with a side order of politics.)

"Oh, I think it would be much better coming from you, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says. Dani keeps herself from glaring at him with an effort.

"Certainly, while the United States expects and intends an orderly transition of control, the disposition of materials collected during the period the Stargate is under our control is far from settled," Agent Johnson says. "So the information that apparently there's a weapon capable of eliminating the threat of Anubis on this ... Dakara ... is a matter certain segments of the government would prefer to know that the SGC intends to act on without delay."

Which is probably one of the things Paul is going to come and tell General Landry this afternoon. She wonders how much of a secret Program disclosure is supposed to be, and from whom, and how (beyond being a complete disaster) it's going to affect the SGC.

"You mean you want us to go and grab it before the IOA can," Dani says flatly. "And you know, I love a good arms race, but you're wrong. We aren't talking about a weapon being on Dakara that can eliminate Anubis. It's a weapon capable of eliminating _us_. I'm not even sure it's a weapon, actually. It's more of a ... device..."

"A... 'device'," Agent Johnson says slowly.

"A machine," Dani says helpfully. (From the expression on Agent Johnson's face, she clearly thinks Dani is playing word games, but she isn't. A weapon is different from a machine. Her Beretta is not the same thing as her toaster.) "Based on everything we know about it—which is exactly nothing, because all of this is guesswork—it's a device which is designed to seed an entire galaxy with life. This means, based on what Khalek has said, that it can also be used to erase life. First."

"Clearly this ... machine ... must be able to be used as a weapon," Agent Johnson says. "Why else would Anubis want it? Such a weapon—machine—could—"

She can't help it. She knows she shouldn't do this, but she can't help it. She rests her elbow on the table and drops her face into her palm, pushing up her glasses. "Sorry," she says, looking at the two of them. (General Landry looks amused, Agent Johnson looks concerned.) "Could you just explain to me the part about how you think having a device only Anubis can survive is going to be _useful_?"

They do another semantic dance about how Agent Johnson doesn't set (or transmit) policy decisions, and General Landry responds with how his orders come from the Pentagon and he follows them (which is unfortunately too true for Dani's peace of mind), and then there's a short digression into the invaluable advisory capacity in which Homeworld functions, but when all that is out of the way, what remains is that the government wants the Dakara device to be a weapon because it would be convenient if it was. And specifically (hardly-inexplicit subtext), the United States wants to grab it now so they can argue over who owns it when the Stargate Program leaves American control (General Landry's been playing the military 'I do what I am ordered to do by the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff' card all meal, meaning Dani's taking the brunt of the friendly fire). Dani mentions (again) that they don't even know what they're looking for. And that it's on a _Goa'uld_ throneworld (which is also a Jaffa holy site) and so even if Ba'al suffers a sudden case of death Dakara still won't be a place the _Tau'ri_ can just walk into and _loot_. (She's never entirely made her peace with what they do here at the SGC, even though they're fighting for Earth's survival, even though there's no one left alive on the worlds they plunder to know about the things they take away.)

So they move on. The Pentagon wants the Dakara weapon, General Landry promises to do all he can to acquire it, Dani knows no decision's being made here, though she doubts Agent Johnson does. (God proposes, SG-1 disposes; she can't remember who first made that joke.) The Dakara device is only a side-trip, really; the main purpose of this is a backdoor briefing on how to stage-manage something (revealing the Stargate) that twelve nations have barely agreed on in a way that redounds to American advantage.

She isn't sure whether she should be offering Agent Johnson a basic course on galactic politics or claiming total ignorance of as many things as she possibly can (with General Landry right there giving her indecipherable glares). She's sure the CIA has access to all the briefing materials she's written for the IOA anyway, and that's as much as Dani knows about political alliances and forms of government out there in the tottering ruins of a galactic empire Earth is currently doing its best to topple. 

But apparently Agent Johnson hasn't read them, because at one point in this labyrinthine not-a-discussion she finally utters the fatal words: "our treaty with the Jaffa."

"We don't have one," Dani says.

"I beg your pardon?"

"We don't have a treaty with the Jaffa. We can't. There's no Jaffa Nation for us to have a treaty _with_." The Jaffa Rebellion is scattered and compartmentalized (though this is probably going to change after Dar Eshkalon). Agent Johnson says they can't sign a treaty with "non-State actors", which is fine with Dani, because there's no single Free Jaffa leader to sign a treaty with. (Aside from Master Bra'tac, and Dani's pretty sure you can't sign a treaty on the basis of the presentation of a GDO, a Frisbee, and a five-pound bag of Hershey's Miniatures.)

But they get through lunch (it runs late), and dessert, and General Landry looks at his watch and says he really has to get back to his desk, and Agent Johnson says she looks forward to working closely with both of them (Dani really wonders what Agent Johnson thinks dear little Dr. Jackson does here at Stargate Command).

"I must say, Dr. Jackson, this has been a very eye-opening experience," Agent Johnson says, as they all (finally!) get up to leave. "You know, your input could be very helpful in shaping ongoing US policy." 

"I already advise the IOA," she answers.

"She's offering you a job, Dr. Jackson," General Landry says.

"I've got a job," Dani says.

"Yes, of course," Agent Johnson says, but Dani suspects the subject will come up again.

Just a hunch.

#

She gets back to her desk just in time to receive (in no particular order), an email memo saying tomorrow's mission schedule for SG-1 has been changed (they're going to talk to Master Bra'tac instead of to P5M-914), a phone call from Graham (to tell her the mission's been changed), and Cam (because it's 1500, which is usually when he comes down, and also he wants to make sure she saw the memo).

"You look tired," he says.

"Exasperated," she says, flopping into her chair. "Paul's going to be here for a while. You should definitely, um, you know. Feed him."

"Paul Davis? Pentagon?" Cam asks. "Not bad news?"

"On a scale from one to 'a _Goa'uld_ fleet is headed for Earth so we're shutting down the SGC', maybe a 'three'," she says. "A 'five' at most. President Hayes is taking the program public. That's why the CIA is here."

Cam takes a moment to work it out. "So Johnson's here to keep an eye on the IOA observers."

"Apparently there's going to be a lot of them."

"And Colonel Davis is coming to...?"

"I don't know. Officially tell General Landry about going public? Sammy was right, by the way. Somebody wants us to bring the Ancient device back from Dakara. That's why she came early."

"And...?"

"General Landry has told Agent Johnson he'll do everything he can."

Cam sighs. "Can't fit a Gatebuster into a daypack."

Because destroying the Dakara device is the best of the available options: it takes it out of Anubis's hands and everyone else's.

"Couldn't set off something that big on Dakara anyway," Dani says. "I need to talk to Master Bra'tac." If Dakara is a sacred site, maybe taking it away from Ba'al would be enough to unify the Free Jaffa factions (something she's pretty sure Lord Haikon can't). Of course, it isn't exactly that easy.

"Seein' him tomorrow," Cam says. "Dinner, huh? Your place?"

It takes her a moment to rewind the conversation in her head back to its starting point, and when she does, she'd really like to kick herself. So many assumptions and presumptions layered and tangled that she doesn't know where to begin. That Paul would be Cam's friend just because he was hers. That Cam would want to cook for someone he doesn't know. That Paul would want to come to dinner.

The last time she saw Paul (she thinks) was at Jack's wake. Cam must have met him then, at least in passing (she doesn't remember as much of that night as she'd like).

"Paul's a friend," she says. (And as their Pentagon liaison, a vast improvement over Major Samuels. She wonders what he's doing these days; she thinks vaguely he retired after Kinsey got snaked.) "I'm, I mean, you don't... He'll probably be..."

"Thrilled and delighted to tuck into some good home cooking," Cam says firmly. "You know how much T likes a chance to show off his cooking skills."

"Yeah, well, we'll see," she says, backpedaling. At least there won't be a briefing for tomorrow's mission. They're going to a friendly planet to speak to an ally (and yes, that's the way some spectacular disasters in SG-1's history have started, but the point is: there won't be a briefing). "Go find some paperwork to do," she says, waving him off.

He pats her on the shoulder as he goes (she thinks they'd both prefer a kiss). On the one hand, nobody actually reviews the surveillance footage unless there's a disaster (which could, of course, occur at any moment). On the other hand, it's archived forever. Somewhere in the digitized bowels of the SGC lurks the entire history of her office.

She spends the rest of the afternoon fidgeting over minor tasks, unable to settle to any of them. She's been here since six (briefing for SG-12, which was off to survey a Babylonian-derived (at least from what the MALP footage indicated) culture on a world with an eighteen-hour rotation, so the mission had been set for local dawn, 0600 SGC time), which technically means she could leave, but....

She's waiting, she suspects, for Paul to show up. She could email him (he's still got an sgc.usaf.mil account on the system), but she's hesitant. Once upon a time she would have done it unthinkingly. Things have changed. It isn't so much the deaths (old news, the mechanism of loss, departure, bereavement) as the rebirths. She's someone now she hasn't been since she was 25, and that's almost half a lifetime (several lifetimes, if you want to be technical) ago. She's accepted the inevitability (the irresistibility) of it, but that doesn't mean she knows what to _do_ with it. Outside, yes. In Cam's apartment (in Cam's bed). Not here in the concrete bunker where "Dr. Jackson" lives and moves and has her being.

She wonders (not for the first time), if what she's given up is something Earth is going to need.

Paul doesn't call (briefings followed by dinner with the General, she suspects; poor man), and at 1645 she goes up to 16 and changes to civilian clothes (they've never felt more like a costume) and continues up to 14. She tells Cam she'll follow him home. Maybe they'll play video games. Or watch a movie. Something to reaffirm her shaky grasp of normalcy.

But they barely get in the door when Cam's phone rings, and he answers it, and listens (saying he'll be right there), and tells her he has to go out.

"I'll come with you," she says, but he shakes his head. 

"Something I'd better handle on my own," he says. "There's stuff in the fridge. Make yourself comfortable. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Be careful," she says. The faint smile she gets in return tells her the call (whatever it is) is bad.

"Always," he says. Then he's gone.

She goes to the window to watch him drive away. Not the evening she'd expected (hoped for), but that's nothing new. She wanders around the apartment, turning on lights, turning up the heat. Inspects the interior of Cam's refrigerator. It contains a daunting array of cryptic sealed containers; she consults her laptop and orders pizza instead. Makes coffee.

_Welcome to my life._

It's not so much self-pity as acknowledgement: this is her life, his life, their life. But it makes her wonder (for the first time in longer than she can remember) about the life-to-come. (The part of it that will take place while she's still alive, of course; there must be a final death out there somewhere, though she hasn't met it yet.) Not the part of it framed by 'tomorrow' or 'next week' or 'if', but a mad hopeful launch of imagination into _the future._ (Whatever it might be, absent new disasters in time travel.)

What will it be? Who will _she_ be? How will going public change everything? (Everything but where she works, since if the IOA wants to move the Gate, first it's going to have to decide _where_ and then build a facility secure enough to contain it. Hey, maybe they'll finally get that Moonbase.) Most of all (if she's honest with herself), will civilian control mean her spite-marriage to the US Military is over? Will she vanish into civilian life again? Go to Atlantis? Lobby for a permanent research mission to P3X-888?

Not without Cam. Nothing without Cam. But if the Program goes international (goes public) what will be his place in it?

No way to know. And not something she wants to discuss with him just now. Planning for the future is bad luck. Everyone knows that. (Even if she doesn't believe in luck.)

#

He isn't back until almost 2130. She's wrapped in Gran'ma's afghan, dozing in front of the Weather Channel, when she hears his key in the door.

"Saved you some pizza," she says.

"You called for takeout?" he asks disbelievingly, and goes into the kitchen for a beer.

When he comes back, he sits down heavily beside her, waving away the pizza.

"Charlie Pakulak tried to eat his gun tonight," he says after a moment. She hasn't gotten those calls as often as some of the people at the Mountain, but she knows about them. Their suicide rate is high. Sometimes people want to talk, or be talked out of it. Sometimes they want a witness. Sometimes they just want someone to know in the name of cleanup.

She thinks for a moment. "SG-17. He was invalided off..." She remembers that mission. It was one of the last SARs SG-1 worked before P3X-439. "...three years ago."

Cam sighs. "Out on a Medical." (She remembers now; there was a swamp. Something bit him. He lost his right leg below the knee.) "Still had his clearance. Kept up with his buddies. Lost it last month."

Which would mean his friends would have to report every contact with him now, and some idiot who didn't know who he'd been would come around to ask everybody stupid questions. "Why?" she asks.

"Drugs," Cam says. "No job, no money, wife left him and took the kids. Now he can't see his buddies. Fortunately they're a bunch of dumb zoomies who aren't going to let a little thing like a security downcheck stop them. His CO called me." She doesn't wonder how he had Cam's number. Just about everybody on the Base does. 

Drug test. There was a time, a few years back, when half the SGC couldn't have passed one of those. They were short-handed, and busy, and the Teams were going out with minor (and not so minor) injuries simply because somebody had to go and there was no one else to send. (Janet had spent a lot of time shouting at General Hammond. Janet had also cleared his people for the field.)

"Just prescription medicine?" she asks. She's no stranger to pain. (Or for that matter, to addiction.)

Cam gives her an odd look. "Yeah, he says. He still wasn't supposed to be on it."

"Is he okay?" she asks.

"The man is in Secured Medical on suicide watch," Cam says carefully, as if Dani hasn't been keeping up. 

"Criminal charges?" she asks.

"Maybe," Cam says, with an almost-smile. "You're thinking. I can tell."

"The IOA is going to want its own Gate Teams," she says. "SG-4 is _Spetsnaz_ , and the other new teams will probably be military, too. They'll still need to be trained for Offworld. The only people who can do that is us. Or former us."

Cam has never needed her to draw him a map. He sighs again, and smiles for real this time. She feels him relax. He puts an arm around her, pulling her close. "So we get the charges dropped and send him to DC. I got a cousin there with a spare couch." 

"Woolsey won't have any trouble getting his security clearance reinstated," she says. (He'll do it, too, because he knows if he doesn't he'll get a personal visit, and she and Woolsey cordially hate one another, true, but he's also _afraid_ of her—for reasons she's never figured out—and she'll trade on that if she has to.) "Charlie might have to do a couple of weeks at the Hotel." (Clean him up, find out if his alien injury is actually as healed as his current doctors think it is; the people at the Hotel are good.)

"Better'n what he's looking at now. I'll go see him on my way in tomorrow. Give him the good word." He looks around the living room as if he's seeing it for the first time. "You cold?" he asks.

"I could be warmer," she says.

"Why don't we see what we can do about that?"

#

Friday they go to Chulak.

It's an unannounced visit (not that they have much of a way of announcing themselves beforehand other than by tying a note to a rock and throwing it through the Gate), but they still aren't quite expecting what they find.

The Gate is always guarded, but usually it's a couple of Jaffa in regular clothes and a signal pyre they can light in case there's trouble. This time there's a full phalanx in _full_ Serpent Guard armor (military surplus, she really hopes, and not new snakes for old). At least thirty of them, and their helmets are closed (and the Jaffa, the Free Jaffa, frequently wear their armor but she's almost never seen them wearing their helmets; Master Bra'tac told her the helmets (specifically) are the emblems of the False Gods). SG-1 steps through the gate into a box formation: a line on either side and two rows facing them.

"Hey, we come in peace," Cam says, raising his hands.

" _Jaffa, kree! Hol mel!_ " Teal'c says, striding past Cam. " _Kel benna!_ "

"Stop, don't shoot, who do you serve?" she translates in an undertone.

One of the Serpent Guards hands his weapon to the Jaffa beside him and steps forward as his helmet retracts. His forehead is scarred, where the mark of Apophis was burned away.

"Teal'c," Rak'nor says. "We did not expect you to return so soon. And with your _Tau'ri_ friends." (Rak'nor has never liked them. Of course, most Jaffa don't have that high an opinion of the _Tau'ri_ just to begin with.)

Teal'c doesn't answer, merely regarding the ranks of armed (and helmeted) Jaffa pointedly.

"This is a difficult time," Rak'nor says.

"Expecting company?" Cam asks, moving down the steps to stand beside Teal'c. She and Sammy follow, but stay at the foot of the steps, one on each end. Out of the way of an incoming wormhole. (And if there's shooting, they're nicely spread out.) "Because I know how awkward it is, you get everything ready, and then all you can do is sit around and wait... am I right?"

Rak'nor gives him a deadly look. (Cam's 'cheerful idiot' act isn't the best she's ever seen—she has a pretty high standard—but it does its job.)

"We have come to speak with Master Bra'tac, if he is here," Teal'c says.

"For the moment, Master Bra'tac remains in the city," Rak'nor answers reluctantly. "I will have some of my warriors escort you."

"No, no, no trouble," Cam says cheerfully. He's walking backward, talking to Rak'nor and heading for the guards facing the Gate. "We know the way. Been here lots'a times. No trouble. We'll just be on our way, you folks can get back to what you're doing..."

Just before he's about to bump into someone (purely accidentally of course) the guards retreat, forming themselves back into the two parallel lines flanking the Gate. She motions to Sammy and the two of them follow Cam down the gantlet of armored figures. The space between her shoulder blades itches. She'd like to run, but it would probably just make them laugh.

"I myself will escort them, Rak'nor," Teal'c says. "Or do you doubt my loyalty?"

"Of all who fight for our freedom, you have given up the most," Rak'nor replies.

She knows as well as Teal'c does that isn't exactly an answer.

#

"So," Cam says, when they're out of earshot of the guards, "what's goin' on?"

"The _chappa'ai_ is heavily guarded," Teal'c says. (Teal'c is even better at giving accurate unhelpful answers to questions than she is.)

"Don't seem too friendly," Cam says. "Also, new. You think they've been attacked since you were here a couple days ago?"

"If there had been an attack, Colonel Mitchell, Rak'nor would not have greeted us as warmly as he did," Teal'c says. 

Cam grins, sharing the joke.

"You know how much I love theorizing in advance of data," Dani says, "and Master Bra'tac will probably be willing to explain everything as soon as we get there, but it probably has more to do with the summit and the Sodan than the _Goa'uld_." A show put on for leaders of any other rebel factions who might come to visit. Or to make sure they don't just come through the Gate and go wandering off.

"Yeah, when you got a big family, and it all gets together, there's gonna be some differences of opinion," Cam says. "I remember this one time we all got together for this _big_ Fourth of July picnic—"

The story he tells is as much to make it evident to any Jaffa patrols that they aren't trying to sneak anywhere as it is one of Cam's peculiar kinds of parable.

"Is it true about the watermelon?" she whispers to Sammy.

"I can't believe you don't remember Cousin Stuckey's Last Chance Watermelon," Sammy says.

"I am pretty sure I would remember it being _flammable_ ," she answers.

#

She supposes she ought to be inside, but there isn't that much for her to do inside. Not really. So she's out here (fighting the war they’ll need to fight after they win, and it's Jack, in memory, and this time it doesn't hurt; not too much, anyway). She's brought candy for the kids. Not chocolate (which contains caffeine; people like Bra'tac can make their own choices, but she isn't going to risk poisoning children), but sugar candy, lollipops and drops. She sits on the steps. Soon enough the first curious children show up. After a few moments, she's collected a crowd.

"Hi," she says to a small girl. "I'm Dani. What's your name?"

The child giggles, and covers her face with her hands, and then darts forward to snatch the candy Dani's holding out to her. She's too young to be marked. Most of the kids gathered around to stare at _an actual Tau'ri, live and in person_ aren't marked. Just a few of the older boys.

There are more Jaffa out here than any other race they know of. If the Empire falls ( _when_ the Empire falls), it will be the Jaffa who inherit the wreckage. Technology, ships, spheres of influence. If they can't unify (and in one sense, it doesn't matter under who, so long as they do), one war is just going to be replaced with another. Earth won't be neutral territory in that war. If it comes.

If it's coming, it's coming soon. She hands out lollipops and thinks of bailing the ocean with a spoon. Maybe she'll bring toys next time she comes.

The Jaffa will be meeting on Dar Eshkalon in two weeks to consider the Sodan proposal. Proposals, really: since the Sodan are suggesting the Jaffa (a) unite under Lord Haikon and (b) attack Dakara to lure Anubis into a fight the Sodan think they can win. They could always reject "a" and go straight to "b", but how the Sodan would take that would be anybody's guess. Probably not well.

She dispenses the candy evenhandedly until she runs out. There isn't any pushing or shoving. There aren't a lot of kids, either, for a city this size. She wonders what to make of that datapoint. She didn't see many children in her wander through the Free Jaffa settlements, come to that. She wonders where they are (she tries not to wonder _if_ they are). Maybe Ish'ta would know.

A foot patrol comes up the street and her audience scatters. The patrol glares at her disapprovingly, but they don't stop. She isn't entirely an unknown quantity to them: not because she's _Tau'ri_ , SG-1, but because she's _human_. The slaves of the (false) gods keep slaves themselves. Human slaves. There are still plenty of them here on Chulak: even if they were freed when Chulak (Apophis, Klorel) fell, that doesn't mean they have anywhere else to go.

It's the ugly underside of most of the cultures they've encountered through the Gate. Worlds within the _Goa'uld_ sphere of influence are kept at a feudal level (starvation and poverty, like Cartago, like Nasyna, like thousands more). Wealthy feudal worlds produce a serf class, like P3R-636, where Pyrus and Shy'lac had most of the people working in the _naquadaah_ mines. (So do some advanced ones, like P3R-118, where Administrator Calder sentenced half the population to slavery until he memory-stamped the wrong SG Team.) The point remains: slavery by whatever name is just as common here (maybe more so, maybe not) as on Earth. If the slaves aren't bought and sold, they're still not free. (Maybe freedom is an illusion; oh _there's_ an original thought.) 

Teal'c's going to the summit (they're hoping to swing the non-aligned Free Jaffa factions to support Master Bra'tac instead of Lord Haikon). Cam wants to go along as his _chal'tii_ , since (as he points out), Teal'c teaches him lots of stuff anyway. That's what they were arguing about when she left; a non-Jaffa apprentice won't do Teal'c's credibility much good. Besides, Cam's is known among the Sodan. But when Bra'tac and Teal'c go to Dar Eshkalon, they'll bring human servants, and that's a role she can play. Volnek is the only one who's seen her. He might not have paid much attention. Or she might not run into him. She wouldn't be at all convincing as a Jaffa warrior's apprentice. She wouldn't have to be. She ought to be in there right now agitating for the chance to go. And she isn't.

Why should she? Why do the _Tau'ri_ have to be there at all? It isn't as if Teal'c won't tell them everything that happens (if they don't trust him after almost ten years, now's a good time to start). It isn't as if he's going to be in any kind of danger she could protect him from (most of the danger on Dar Eshkalon is going to be political in nature, and Teal'c's on his own there). And _Tau'ri_ spies attending what is (when all is said and done) the first meeting of the Jaffa Nation would probably not make things come out the way Earth wants. But she knows Earth (General Landry, the Pentagon, the CIA, whoever) will want one of their own at Dar Eshkalon (and by that they don't mean someone who's given up his home and his family to spend years risking his life for Earth; they mean someone born on Earth), and if they don't get that, it might be tough to get permission for Teal'c to go.

She sighs, gets to her feet, and goes back inside.

#

"My student shows great wisdom," Master Bra'tac is saying as she comes in. "His own student shows considerably less."

"I'm out of candy," she explains.

"You haven't missed much," Cam says, resignedly. "We've covered not knowing who's going to be there, moved on to not knowing what they're going to decide, did a _whole_ sidebar into how much they're all going to trust each other, and come back to Square One."

"No. The question isn't whether Teal'c will take you with him. The question is: what if the Jaffa don't just attack Dakara to lure Anubis into battle? What happens if the Jaffa take—and hold—Dakara? Teal'c says it's sacred ground," she adds.

"Dakara is a place sacred to all Jaffa, no matter which of the False Gods have held them in bondage—or whether they have thrown off those bonds thousands of years ago," Bra'tac says. "It was in the great temple at Dakara that the first Jaffa were born; its stones are the emblem of our slavery. Capture the temple at Dakara, dedicate it to our freedom, and never again will any Jaffa bow down to the lies and tyranny of a false god," he says firmly. "But even I cannot believe it is possible with the forces we now have at our command—even if the might of every Jaffa who embraces freedom is weighed in that balance. From time immemorial, Dakara has been held by Ba'al, who was once the favorite of Ra. Even now, his forces are mighty."

"What if Ba'al helps?" she asks.

It's a simple plan. It only involves _trusting Ba'al._ Ba'al doesn't want Anubis to get his hands on the Doomsday Device any more than anyone else does. He won't risk acting against Anubis directly; Ba'al is stuck impersonating the Useful Underlord (which is why he's still alive). But if Ba'al gets word of a big Jaffa gathering on, say, Dar Eshkalon, he'll send his fleet ( _sans peur et sans reproche_ ) especially if he has reason to suspect a strike against the Ancient Device is planned for the same time. He'll leave Dakara unprotected. At least long enough for someone (meaning them) to destroy the Device.

(Maybe. Probably. Too bad they can't just ask him outright.)

"Once we hold Dakara, even if Ba'al moves to retake it, he will fail," Bra'tac says. "Our agents on his ships will spread the word of our victory, and his fleet will no longer be his, but ours. Jaffa in every fleet will rise up to embrace freedom."

"At the very least, once the Dakara Device is no longer operable, Ba'al won't have any reason to maintain his alliance with Anubis," Sammy says.

"So how does that help us with Dar Eshkalon?" Cam asks.

"It becomes merely a diversion," Bra'tac announces. "Let this self-styled 'Lord' Haikon say he will lead the Free Jaffa against Anubis. If matters go as you say, Ba'al will defeat him for us—and the Jaffa will be the victors!"

That's a pretty big "if".

But it's what they've got. Leak word of the summit (which, frankly, is probably going to happen anyway; if the Jaffa Resistance has spies in Ba'al's armies, he's certainly got spies in theirs). Use their _vo'cuum_ to tell Ba'al to strip Dakara of defenders. The Jaffa take Dakara, the undecideds rally, the Sodan Suicide Squad becomes a non-issue. Maybe Ba'al turns on Anubis. Maybe he doesn't.

They have two weeks to figure out how to make this work. Most of the heavy lifting will be on the Jaffa side, but they'll need to go back and forth to coordinate things. (Deciding what to tell General Landry is going to be the fun part; Sammy suggests they tell him they're going to try to get to Dakara while Ba'al's distracted. And then offer up some plans to distract him, of course.)

So it looks like Cam is going to Dar Eskalon after all.

At least officially.

#

When they step back through the Gate, Paul is waiting (with General Landry) in the Gate Room. (She wonders if he arrived on schedule; this is the first time she's seen him.)

"Welcome home, SG-1," General Landry says. "How did your meeting with our offworld allies go?"

"Got a big serving of 'we don't know' with a side order if 'it depends,'" Cam says cheerfully. "Got the date and time and address, though."

(The address they're handing over isn't the real one, but that doesn't affect anything on the SGC end—except, maybe, that they won't be handing the location of the summit over to any _Goa'uld_ spies they still have somewhere between here and Washington. Kresh'ta is a lot like Dar Eshkalon; it could have been chosen just as easily.)

"Good to know," General Landry says. "I don't need to introduce you to Colonel Davis, do I?"

"Paul," Dani says. She supposes she ought to shake his hand, but she hugs him instead (civilian consultant; military regulations can _bite her_ ). "I heard you were coming. How long can you stay?"

"I'll be here for at least a few weeks," he says. "Colonel Mitchell. Sam. Teal'c. It's good to see all of you again."

"'Cam'," Cam says, and they shake hands.

"Debrief in twenty," General Landry says. "Try not to be late."

Paul walks them to the armory to check in their weapons and clear out their vests, and says he'll leave them to it, but Cam says something about the nickel tour, so Paul comes along to the gear-up room. All they're doing is ditching their vests and jackets (Chulak is cold). Half the stuff goes back into hangars and lockers; the packs will be picked up by Supply and repacked for their next mission (except hers, which she jams into her locker; she'll take it back to her office after the briefing). Twenty minutes is barely enough time to get back to the Briefing Room. (Fortunately she can do the 'Known Factions of the Jaffa Rebellion' speech pretty much from memory.) Cam says the Sodan are pushing to be in charge of the whole thing (hence the increased security on Chulak), and that while they've got the whole 'mystic warriors from the dawn of time' thing going for them (Cam's words), Master Bra'tac's been boots on the ground since this whole thing started and even _he_ hasn't been able to get everything moving in the same direction (or, as she says: "traditional Jaffa factionalism may militate against any form of stable coalition").

"Any new ideas about Dakara, ladies and gentlemen?" General Landry asks.

"Nothing quite yet, sir," Cam says. "We're working on it."

"Work faster," General Landry says. "Dismissed."

The five of them look at each other. "Are you dismissed, too?" she asks Paul. "Because I didn't think he actually ... could."

"Well, I'm making myself useful," Paul agrees. "But it's more of a case of us both reporting to the same boss. And I'd say there's a desk full of reports calling my name, but it's 1440 on Friday. What do you say I take you all out for a drink? Is O'Malley's still as good as it used to be?"

"Sure is," Cam says, "but what about you come on over to my place instead? We kinda traditionally get together at my place of a Friday. More'n welcome."

"Another time then," Paul starts to say.

"You _have_ to come," Dani says. "There's movies, and Sammy picked the subject and Teal'c picked the movies, and Cam always cooks too much, and we want to have you come to actual dinner, and this way you'll know if you want to say 'yes'." (And she'll have an ally in her campaign not to watch the movies, because Sammy picked "romantic comedy" and anything's possible.)

"Can't turn down an offer like that, Colonel," Sammy says lightly. "Really."

"It would be our pleasure to provide you with appropriate food and recreation," Teal'c says magisterially. And so it's settled. 

Dani asks Paul where he's staying, and he says he's up on 25 and Dani says "I've got a guest room, and it's even above ground, get your stuff." She says Paul can ride with her (of course he has a car, but that doesn't mean he knows the city) because she needs to stop off at the house anyway (she has a Saturday meeting that needs a suit) and he can pick up his car when Sammy drops Teal'c off later. It's only on the way to her Jeep that it occurs to her she hasn't mentioned to Paul he'll be staying in an empty house tonight. (He's smart; she's sure he'll figure it out.) And it's probably as good as an announcement of who she'll be staying _with_ , but if it's going to be an open secret (and anyway it's just confirming what everybody in North Carolina already thinks), this is a good place to start.

The talk on the drive home is light and inconsequential. By now they know a number of the same Washington insiders.

She lets them in and shows Paul to the guest room (where he says he welcomes the opportunity to get out of his Blues) and digs out towels and the spare set of housekeys (and says he's welcome to use the shower, an invitation which must be tendered explicitly because the only full bath in the house is in her bedroom), then goes to pack (for the whole weekend, let's be honest here, but it isn't as if they didn't all arm a very big bomb today and then set up housekeeping on it so she's going to take what she can get while she can get it). She's just closing up the suitcase when he taps on the doorframe. He looks more comfortable in jeans and a shirt and sweater.

"Taking a trip?" he asks, nodding toward the suitcase.

"Meeting in Denver tomorrow and I'm not coming home tonight," she says (meeting in Denver where she needs to be wearing a _suit_ ; insult, meet injury). "I don't think there's any food here," she says. "But there's coffee. Make yourself at home. There's a fire laid in the fireplace. More wood out on the deck."

"Thanks," he says. "I spend so much time in hotels. This is a nice change. But before we go... Dani, I need to talk to you about Disclosure."

She can hear the capital letters. In a little more than 24 hours it's gone from "disclosure" to Disclosure. A great and secret show, curtain going up.

"I got the CIA version at lunch yesterday," she says.

"I heard. I think you need to know—" Paul stops and looks uncomfortable.

"What?"

"That you're going to be involved with it whether you want to be or not. I spoke with Kerry today. She mentioned you aren't interested in working with the IOA."

"I already work with the IOA," she points out. "General Landry mentioned something about a job. Join the IOA? Not interested."

"Even if it's the President asking?" Paul asks.

Henry Hayes is persuasive, and charming, and determined, and she has no intention of doing whatever he's thinking of. She knows Paul isn't here to make any formal offer, but to test the waters? Yes, maybe.

"Paul, I shoot people, translate alien languages, and occasionally broker a treaty with crazy aliens. Tell him to get Dr. Weir. I don't think she shoots people as often."

"According to the reports from Pegasus, you'd be wrong," Paul says. "But Elizabeth Weir didn't open the Stargate. You did."

"I am pretty sure I do not like where this conversation is headed."

"You're probably right," Paul says. "Even if you don't accept the position with the Oversight Authority, or whatever yet-to-be-determined organization follows it, the President is going to want you front-and-center during Disclosure."

"As the kinder, gentler face of the Stargate Program?"

"As the much-less-military face of it," Paul admits. "You have to agree, all that brass isn't going to look good on the Hill. Or on CNN." 

Metonymy is a rhetorical trope, much beloved of the Ancient Greeks, of referring to a whole by a part. Thus, "brass" (buttons? shell casings?) stands in for the military-industrial complex, while "the Hill" is the whole of their elected government. The Ancient Greeks would be pleased, she imagines, to be so useful so long after their disappearance.

"It isn't going to look good anywhere," she agrees with a sigh. It will look like the military setting policy, and the American military isn't supposed to do that. (Even though in this case it pretty much has, through three Administrations now.)

"Which is why the President wants you involved," Paul says. "You've explained Earth to dozens of alien cultures. Now you can explain them to Earth."

She thinks of Emmett Bregman. Of Julia Donovan (Inside Access), who was promised an exclusive when the Program goes public. (Of Armin Seleg, who knew things he shouldn't have and possibly—probably—died for them.) Reporters and documentaries and press conferences and endless interviews (endless agendas; she thinks of Kinsey).

"Paul, I will make you a deal. _If_ we take out Anubis, and _if_ Henry Hayes is re-elected and _if_ Disclosure proceeds according to something like an organized plan and _if_ at that point there is nothing else in immediate danger of wiping out all life as we know it, _then_ I will give you my list of demands. Not living in Washington and _not_ having to be nice to stupid people are going to be two of them, though."

"Fair enough," he says, though she hasn't (she knows) given him the answer he was hoping for. "How close are you to getting it done? With Anubis, I mean."

"We'd better be pretty close," she answers. "Because I don't think we're getting another chance."

#

Paul isn't SGC, but he's as close as family, here for most of the major Lockdowns, Wildfires, alien invasions, and minor disasters like Earth getting sucked into a black hole (fortunately the time-dilation bubble didn't expand much beyond the Mountain, but the Pentagon was still doing intraservice cleanup for months afterward). He fits right in (and even helps in the kitchen). Cam makes smothered pork chops, and by the time dinner's ready, Cam and Paul have worked out that the two of them are distant cousins, something Cam seems to feel is noteworthy enough to call home on Sunday about to tell his folks. (Momma sent dried-cherry pies in the latest care package, along with the brownie bars Dani particularly likes.)

So the evening is friendly, and easy, and at the end of it, Paul and Teal'c and Sammy leave.

And Dani doesn't.

#

Saturday she drives to Denver for lunch with Candidate #2. They're meeting at DEN; the candidate is on her way home to San Francisco to visit her parents. Dani picks the Denver Chop House: if she has to give up a Saturday for this, the government can buy her a nice lunch.

(She pulls off along the way to remind Cam that if he's going to go do laundry he should knock first because Paul's there; Cam just laughs.)

Denver International Airport is the focus of a vast number of conspiracies (none of whom ask _why_ Denver's airport should be their locus). Ask the right people, and they will tell you there's a three hundred thousand square foot secret facility built under the Main Concourse (opinions as to its purpose vary), which Dani, in her occasional stints as Minister of Truth, has used to conceal the truth about the actual secret underground facility not that far away. (Everybody knows there can't be anything built beneath NORAD, right?)

Dr. Caitlin Wong is fresh out of school and very frankly looking for a job that will pay off her student loans. She's curious about what her work would involve, something Dani has to hedge about (she says much of it involves teaching). Dani's curious about Dr. Wong's academic background (young and stupid—or at least naive—Dr. Wong is probably going to be the best match of the three, even though Dani hasn't seen the third one yet).

She has never (small mercies) heard of Dr. "Dani von Daniken" Jackson, but she knows she's being headhunted by a government program. She asks if staring at goats is involved (clearly this is some topical joke) and Dani says goats are a possibility after the probationary period is over. This seems to mean something different to Dr. Wong than it means to her.

But her CV is impressive, and her languages are excellent. Dani says they'll get back to her by the end of the month.

Assuming Earth is still here. But she doesn't say that.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second (and last) chapter containing explicit sex. Dani is told that Simon Gardner is dead while in "protective custody": he's either committed suicide or been tortured to death. A member of another SG Team attempts suicide.


	17. JANUARY 2007—FEBRUARY 2007; JUNE 2008

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The SGC is going to Dakara in the worst possible way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter specific warnings in endnotes.

At brunch on Sunday (Paul was invited but declined, whether because of tact or other commitments Dani isn't sure, but it makes things easier since brunch is the formal non-announcement that she and Cam are whatever they are, which is why it's all four of them), Teal'c explains to Dani why people stare at goats, something that’s puzzled her ever since Dr. Wong brought it up (as if it were an obvious question). It's a book title, actually ("The Men Who Stare At Goats"); the book seems to be about unlikely secret government programs (pot, kettle, yeah). She's never sure how much of this stuff Teal'c believes, though he makes a good case for the SG Teams being something he calls the "First Earth Battalion", which he assures them is (according to the book; where does he find these things?) dedicated to "creating and performing evolutionary breakthrough actions on behalf of all peoples and planets". It sounds like a nice idea, really (depending on your definition of 'evolutionary breakthrough actions'). It does make Dani wonder if Dr. Wong is a secret conspiracy theorist. Not that that's actually a drawback to working for the SGC.

Since nobody has yet sworn her to secrecy (and because Sammy has taken the opportunity to sweep Cam's place for listening devices; something she's done for all of them on a fairly regular basis after the SGC bugged her place over Orlin, which she's still mad about), Dani tells them everything she knows about Disclosure (which isn't much). At least it provides another topic of conversation than the fact she's sleeping with Cam in a non-platonic fashion; legal (under the new rules) or not, Dani's pretty sure General Landry isn't going to like it (for his own mysterious and unfathomable reasons). Just as well, she thinks randomly, that her days with the SGC are numbered.

"The Program is finally going public?" Sammy says, sounding pleased. "That's going to be... a big mess," she finishes, sounding less pleased. "I wonder if that means they'll air Emmett Bregman's documentary?"

"Oh, god, I hope not," Dani says fervently.

Although they probably will. Disclosure isn't just the revelation of another government scandal. It's space travel and aliens and life on other worlds (thank god for _Korolev_ ; at least the Russians will be taking some of the blame for keeping secrets and owning spaceships).

None of them can really imagine quite what it's going to be like.

"Three ring circus with the tent on fire," Cam says.

"Paul says they want me to, um, probably make the formal public announcement," Dani says. Cam frowns.

"I wonder if it's too late to get a transfer to Space Command," Sammy says, only half joking. "Or Atlantis."

Atlantis would be nice, Dani thinks. The City of the Ancients. A chance to finally, definitively, translate Ancient. And read the thousands of books in the Atlantean library. (And not be anywhere near Earth when the Bregman documentary airs.)

"We can burn that bridge when we come to it," Cam says. "Right now, we got a bad guy to take care of."

They spend most of the afternoon kicking around ideas for the Dakara strike.

#

"Cam. We need to go talk to the Lucian Alliance."

"In the morning."

#

Monday. Kerry Johnson is in the Department Heads meeting, and so is Paul. General Landry doesn't explain why they're there, although Dani suspects Disclosure is pretty much an open secret (and finally going to happen, so much for Dr. Levi saying "Next year in Jerusalem," every time the topic comes up, to which Dr. Chetwynd's antiphon is: "And Jesus is coming, too"). There's a heavy mission schedule, but SG-1 isn't on it. They've got a meeting with General Landry this afternoon, to present ideas on filling the Pentagon's shopping list. (Dani has a few ideas. She doesn't think he's going to like them.)

As soon as the meeting's over, she goes to Medical. Sally's in her office.

"Tell me about tretonin," she says, sitting down.

Sally sets aside the file she's been looking at. "Not really my area, but I can give you the basics. It's a synthetic version of the compound the Pangarans created; the _Tok'ra_ designed our version to replace the symbiotes the Jaffa carry. You can think of it more or less like insulin; once the proper dose for the individual has been determined, it's administered by daily intramuscular injection. Fortunately, it's one-and-done; once the right dose has been calculated, it doesn't change. As far as we know," she adds, sounding faintly disgruntled by the not-knowing.

"Are a lot of Jaffa on it right now?" Dani asks. Sally taps a few keys on her computer and peers into the screen.

"About a hundred right now, including Teal'c and Bra'tac. Teal'c's the only one I can track on a regular basis. It would be nice to have more data, but... we just can't get it. The rest of the subjects don't exactly visit here regularly."

"So how do they get it?" Dani asks.

Sally frowns. "I admit, I'm not entirely sure. We send regular shipments to the Alpha Site. I suppose they distribute it from there."

"So we're manufacturing it?" Dani asks. "On Earth?"

"Along with a few other compounds of extraterrestrial origin," Sally agrees. "Unlike insulin, it doesn't require refrigeration, and it's extremely stable. We keep a six month supply here at all times. I rotate the oldest batches out as part of the Alpha Site shipments, but as far as I've been able to determine, it doesn't go bad. Of course," she adds, "my control samples are only four years old. But that's pretty stable."

"How is it made?" Dani asks.

"And there you have exceeded my area of expertise," Sally says with a smile. "I know there's a copy of the formula in our database, and in an emergency we could try making some here at the SGC. Is there something I need to know?"

"Nope," Dani says. "Everything's fine. Thanks."

"Any time," Sally says, sounding a little puzzled.

From there Dani goes up to 14. SG-12 is a Marine unit, and they're traditionally six-person teams (Cam says it's because Marines get lonely); 12 is Major Lejeune Hadden (commanding), Major "Emcee" Escher (his initials are "M. C."; nobody knows what they actually stand for), Lt. McKenzie, Captain Stevens, and Sergeants Conway and York. It's their SAR Marine Unit, which means heavy casualties; SG-12 has been rebuilt five times in its history. Its current incarnation is as a "knock on doors" team; Major Escher (SG-12) is their Lucian expert (a thankless task, since 12's been chasing around trying to get them to sit down at the negotiating table, with no particular luck so far). 

She knocks on the doorframe of the office shared by Escher and McKenzie. Hadden won't have the information she needs.

"You lost, Doc?" Lt. McKenzie asks.

"Nah, Spuds, the Doc's just looking for some intelligent conversation," Escher says. "C'mon in. Coffee's hot." He gestures to a pot sitting on an (illicit) hot plate. She fills her cup. (Marine coffee: black as death, hot as hell, and strong as love.)

"Thanks," she says. "I'm looking for information on the Lucian Alliance." She leans against the wall: two desks, two chairs, and a file cabinet don't leave any room for a spare chair.

"You and me both," Escher says with a sigh. "Hey. Heard about Charlie Pakulak. That was good, what you did."

"Cam's idea," she says, shrugging a little. "I just poked a couple of people."

"Hey, is it true the Program's going public?" McKenzie asks.

"That's what they're saying," she says. _Bring the Jubilee._ "Is there a book on when?"

"Will be by the end of today," Escher says. "C'mon, give. When's it going to be?"

"That's what they're still deciding," she says. "Not before the next Inauguration, and that's if Hayes is re-elected. I swear, that's all I know," she adds, holding up her hands.

"Good enough," he says. "Spuds, fifty on September of '09. Now. What can I tell you about everything we don't know about the Space Mafia?"

"Just one thing. Are they working with the Jaffa?"

The _Goa'uld_ Empire is tottering. (Anubis is helping with that.) System Lords are falling, underlords are retreating, everybody's giving up (for one reason or another) planets they've ruled for millennia. When the _Goa'uld_ abandon a world, they don't do it neatly. They abandon palaces, technology...people. Many of whom have no idea of how to use their own Stargates, and without the network of commerce (it isn't glamorous to think of _ha'taks_ carrying holds full of turnips, but the Jaffa are fighters, not farmers, and everybody has to eat), a lot of them are starving. Before Anubis, the Lucians were something like an evil Rebel Alliance; mixed populations that had fled to the edges of the Empire and survived by raiding. As the Empire collapses, they've expanded: openly claiming worlds, setting up trade routes. Claiming former slave populations as their own. It's Feudalism With Spaceships Mark II; if the Lucians aren't any better than the _Goa'uld_ , they're at least no worse.

But the one difference between the Lucians and the _Goa'uld_ is one that's going to spell trouble for Earth at some point. The Lucians cooperate with each other.

"Maybe. Probably. We don't know. Not for sure. The guy at the top is named Netan, which is just about all we know about him. He has a bunch of lieutenants—seconds, in Lucian parlance—who oversee specific areas of Lucian interest. Each of these seconds has underbosses reporting to him, and each of them controls a number of worlds. Some of those worlds have a full-time Lucian presence, some don't. We think the top levels of the Alliance are ship-based, which is one of the reasons we haven't been able to find them."

"So... _Goa'uld_ ships," she says (has to be; it isn't like anybody else is building ships out there). "And Jaffa crews?" She remembers her lovely vacation with Worrel on P6G-452. She didn't see any Jaffa, but from what Escher's saying, Worrel would have been someone near the bottom of the Lucian hierarchy. She wonders whatever happened to him. "Mercenary troops?"

Escher shrugs. "When people get out of line, the Lucians come down on them pretty hard." 

And with the Lucian Alliance expanding as fast as it is—and Escher thinks it's doubling its volume every few months—it can't do all its enforcing itself. That means (best guess) Jaffa mercenaries. Not every Jaffa who's fled from (or been abandoned by) one of the False Gods joins the Rebellion, and even the Jaffa Rebellion isn't as wonderful as it sometimes looks from a safe ( _Tau'ri_ ) distance. Food, clothing, weapons all have to come from somewhere (the lessons of Kytano, or Imhotep if you prefer), and that somewhere is usually raids.

The Jaffa aren't too particular about who they raid, as long as it's an easy target. The Jaffa want freedom for the _Jaffa._ This doesn't mean they care about the non-Jaffa (which is one of the reasons the Lucian Alliance is gaining so much ground). If worlds full of former _Goa'uld_ slaves have something they want, the Jaffa aren't going to look at those former slaves as fellow victims of the False Gods. They're going to look at them as _Not Us._

If (when) the Empire finally does fall, the Jaffa Nation (if there's _one_ Jaffa Nation, which would be nice) and the Lucian Alliance are either going to go to war, or make an alliance. She's not sure what outcome she's hoping for. She does know that the Lucian Alliance is a mercantile confederation at its heart. If they can form a trade relationship with the Jaffa Nation...

If they have a product to sell...

"Thanks for the help," she says.

"Hey, you want unfounded speculation and wild theories, I'm your guy."

It _is_ speculation. Things he wouldn't put into a report. But it's useful.

She's pretty sure she has an idea.

#

After all her side-trips she has to scramble to take care of briefing her department (and she feels the lack of Ancient Greece keenly enough she's tempted to recommend Dr. Wong without seeing Candidate #3) before lunch, but they have General Landry at 1500 and they need to finish getting their plans ready.

Monday mornings are always a scramble, but now she feels a new urgency: _Come on, hurry up, get it done, Disclosure's coming and everything we've worked and bled and died for in ten years here is going to be swept away by bureaucrats and corporate raiders who don't care and don't understand. Hurry, hurry, hurry: last chance to salvage alliances, treaties, trade agreements..._

_Last chance to see._

"What's gotten into you this morning?" Amelia asks, as Dani sweeps into her office, breathless, at 1315 (already late for lunch, oh well).

"What?" Dani says. "Can you cover Egypt with SG-14 on Wednesday? I might not be here."

"After all these years, you have to ask that question?" (Amelia was her advisor at UCLA; Dani still remembers scrambling to staff her department that first year, trying to find people who would take her seriously after she'd torched her academic reputation and vanished.) "Anything in particular?"

"Ritual taboos, mostly. General Landry would like them to come back. PC4-X37; looks like Old Kingdom according to the probe—" They've replaced the MALP for first looks: a tiny drone with a camera that takes ten seconds of high-speed pictures, sends them home, then flies back into the event horizon and destructs. Ideally without anybody noticing. "—inhabited, used to be Ra's, we're hoping no _Goa'uld_ presence."

"I'll tell them when to bow and what to kiss," Amelia says. "Does your potential absence have anything to do with our new CIAgent and the fact our Puzzle Palace liaison is making an appearance?"

"Yes, no, maybe," Dani says. "More to do with the Jaffa Summit." There are few secrets on Level 18.

"Cheer up, they'll probably spend six months arguing over the shape of the table," Amelia says (bafflingly). "Now shoo. Colonel Mitchell was here 45 minutes ago to tell me to remind you about lunch."

"Going," Dani promises. "Going now."

#

"'Bout to send out a search party," Cam says. He's chosen for her already, thank god. She picks up the sandwich.

"I still think the Sodan gauntlet is our best hope," Sammy's saying. "We've got it working reliably."

"We've only got the one," Cam says (continuing a conversation that started before she got here, clearly). "And we'd need somebody to walk through the Gate visibly. Otherwise they're going to wonder why it opened."

"If it's guarded," Sammy says.

"Way to bet," Cam says. "We can't be sure the Jaffa are going to decide on a ground assault. Or that Ba'al will take the bait. And dangling that particular bait is going to be—"

"Tretonin," Dani says around a mouthful of tuna. "And the Lucian fleet."

Cam blinks at her. "You _have_ been busy," he says. "So. How do we get to the Lucians?"

"They come to us," Dani says. "We tell them about Kresh'ta, or, okay, I haven't got that part worked out yet. But—" She glances at Teal'c apologetically. There's no way to make this sound good. "Adult Jaffa need symbiotes to survive. Young ones. _Prim'ta_ are getting so hard to find that—" That Jaffa kill each other to gain them. Like the Sodan. Like the Hak'tyl. "But there's tretonin, which can replace symbiotes. We make it. The Tok'ra make it—" (the Tok'ra _can_ make it, but they only did that as part of a complicated deal with the Pangarans—addicted to the drug they'd been creating from Egeria's symbiotes—that she doesn't want to poke at too closely.) "—and the Jaffa will manufacture it for themselves as soon as possible, but meanwhile—"

"Children die," Teal'c says flatly. "Because they cannot be given a symbiote at _prata_. And tretonin is in short supply."

"I know," Dani says quietly. "And if there was more tretonin, that wouldn't happen. So—" she takes a deep breath "—we give the formula to the Lucian Alliance."

There's a moment of silence.

"Come again?" Cam says.

"The Lucians hire Jaffa mercenaries," Dani says. "Everybody knows about tretonin. We load up a ship with a bunch of it—as much as we can make—and information on how to make it. We say it's for the Jaffa summit, I mean, that's a good idea too, but the point is to explain why we have a ship full of tretonin. The Lucians find out and take the ship and the cargo—"

"We get us some Space Mafia to talk to, and the Lucians go into the tretonin business," Cam says. "So far so good. How does that get the Jaffa to Dakara, and us up nice and cozy with the Ancient Device?"

"We send Ba'al to Kresh'ta with his fleet," she says. (They still need to work out the details of that and clear them with General Landry, and she needs a chance to ask Cam privately if they're going to give Ba'al the real location of the summit.) "We tell the Lucians Anubis has a doomsday weapon on Dakara. They go after it, Anubis tries to stop them, the Free Jaffa seize Dakara, we locate the Device and disable it, the Jaffa tell the Lucians it's been destroyed."

"Step 3: profit," Sammy comments.

"The Lucian Alliance will cooperate with the Jaffa instead of fighting 'em," Cam says slowly, working it out. "Especially once they've got something they think the Jaffa want. There's your profit, Samantha Eileen."

"Timing's going to be critical," Sammy says. "What if Ba'al doesn't go to Kresh'ta?"

"Ba'al's been playing both sides since Anubis came back," Dani points out. (She won't think of Abydos.) "He doesn't want Anubis to, um—"

"Wipe out all life in the universe?" Cam says. "Yeah, I got that. And wants to keep his skin in one piece, too."

"Somebody's skin, anyway," Sammy mutters, and Dani's startled into a laugh.

"If Ba'al was strong enough to destroy Anubis directly, he would," she says. "He hasn't, so he can't. But if he can make trouble for him just by being in the right place..."

"Or the wrong place," Cam agrees. "Had an uncle who did just the same thing. Now. All we gotta do is make the dominos fall in the right order."

"And convince General Landry," Dani says.

"There is that," Cam agrees.

#

General Landry likes the first part of the plan—decoy Ba'al to the Jaffa Summit (somehow) while the Jaffa attack Dakara—and doesn't like the second.

"And why are we involving the Lucian Alliance, Colonel Mitchell?"

"The more the merrier," Cam says. "We don't know the size of Ba'al's fleet, we don't know the size of the Jaffa fleet, and we don't know how many ships Anubis might bring to the party. But the one thing we do know is: the Lucians have a lot of rolling stock."

"And you think the Lucians are in favor of Jaffa independence?" Landry asks.

"Can't say," Cam says. "I know they aren't in favor of the _Goa'uld._ "

That much is classic game theory (something with which she's become far too familiar over the years): the Lucians are _Goa'uld_ Lite. That means they have to wipe out _Goa'uld_ Classic.

General Landry has on his _I don't understand this and therefore I don't like it_ face. "And you think we can... lure them into cooperating?"

Cam grins modestly. "More like we can slip them the information we want them to act on while they think they're swallowing a nice tasty chunk of tretonin," he says. "Getting them to sit down to the table; that might be a bit more work."

"The members of the Lucian Alliance are our enemies," General Landry says, as if this might be news. "I don't think I can approve a plan that involves placing one of our ships in danger of attack specifically for the purpose of providing them with sensitive military intelligence and vital materials."

Tretonin and its formula, he means.

"Well, sir," Cam says easily, "there's always Plan B."

"We provide the tretonin shipment to the Jaffa, and ask Master Bra'tac to take it to Kresh'ta by ship," Sammy says.

"And how is that an improvement?" General Landry asks sardonically.

"Well, sir, if it arrives, well and good: we can hand out a bunch of free samples and everybody wins," Cam says. "I know Volnek's gonna be looking for refills, just for starters. If it doesn't make it... Well, we still get our message to the Lucian Alliance."

Cam's skating over what they all (except possibly General Landry, the IOA, and everybody in Washington) suspect already: that Chulak's Free Jaffa already have ties to — or at least contact with — either the Alliance itself, or Jaffa groups who do.

"That you want to sit down at the table," General Landry says. "What do you intend to do, Colonel Mitchell? Write them a note?"

"No," Dani says, before anybody else can say anything. "I'll go with it."

"Dr. Jackson—" General Landry says, barely beating out Cam's protest.

"If we're supposed to be telling them how to use it, somebody has to do that," Dani says, talking quickly. "Sally—Dr. Brightman—can teach me the basics, and Master Bra'tac is already on tretonin, so he can help. I won't go down to Kresh'ta. I'll stay on the ship—" Which, if they're lucky, will be heading for Dakara a few hours after it arrives. "—and if the ship _is_ taken by the Lucians, I can speak on behalf of Earth and the Jaffa can't. Also, I'm the best one to go."

"And you figure that _how_?" Cam says. (He isn't happy. Well, she's making this up as she goes along.)

"I'm not a threat," Dani says. "I'm not a soldier, I'm not Jaffa. I'm a civilian. I have no authority. They won't feel a need to prove anything."

"Except where they decide to cancel the Lucian National Debt by holding you to ransom," Cam points out.

"I'm going to assume they don't want open hostilities with the Free Jaffa," Dani says. "Taking a prisoner off a Jaffa ship—"

"Is something they might be willing to risk," General Landry says. "No, Dr. Jackson. I will okay a shipment of tretonin to Chulak. What they do with it then is up to them." 

He gets to his feet, and they all rise.

"And one more thing, Dr. Jackson, Colonel Mitchell?" 

She stares at him, suddenly irrationally certain that he _knows,_ that he's going to say something...

"Yes to the tretonin, no to the formula. We are not giving strategic intelligence away to the first person who asks."

Even if it's something worthless to everybody but the Jaffa.

"Understood, sir," Cam says.

#

"What the hell did you think you were doing in there?" Cam asks, as soon as they're out in the corridor.

"Aside from stampeding General Landry into sending a shipment of tretonin somewhere other than the Alpha Site?" Sammy says. (Which, yeah, at least they got that.)

_My job._ And that doesn't change, even now that she's _happy_ , even now that she's got so much more to lose than she's ever imagined having. "If General Landry won't give us _Odyssey_ or _Daedalus_ to use to make contact with the Lucians, somebody has to be there if they take the bait." 

"And you think Worral didn't mention your name?" Cam says. (If he got off P6G-452 and home alive is implied. And named names.)

"Tell me another way to get a face-to-face with Netan," Dani says.

Cam just shakes his head. Dani doesn't pursue the argument. She didn't think the plan would work, anyway. And she has bigger fish to fry. Good odds at least some of the tretonin they send to Chulak will make its way into the hands of the Lucians.

_"What did you know and when did you know it?"_ She can't remember the source of the quote, or who said it to her often enough for it to stick in her memory, but it's apt. Who knows about the Dakara Device now? Who might find out, and when? She told Vala: did Vala tell Ba'al? Vala's a double agent (paymaster unknown): who else did she tell, and when?

_"You Tau'ri think there are only two sides to every problem."_

_"Not any more."_

They spend another hour or so kicking around ideas without coming up with anything new. Sammy (and probably Dani) have to get to the surface of Dakara to look for the Dakara Device (and destroy it once they find it; that much is expressly implied). They can't do that while Ba'al's there. (They have a week and a half to decide what to tell Ba'al, and if, and how, and when.) They might not even be able to do it while the Free Jaffa are trying to take the place. (And they certainly won't be able to do it afterward; that's one thing Dani's certain of.) The only thing they come up with is Cam's idea of borrowing one of the 303s to join the attack on Dakara on the pretext of showing _Tau'ri_ support to the Free Jaffa (which means they'll need to fix a rendezvous point with Master Bra'tac, since nobody's going to be having a summit meeting on Kresh'ta, and that plan is based on _Haikon not winning Jomo Secu_). Borrowing a 303 to attack a _Goa'uld_ throneworld is, somehow, a different matter than borrowing it to go looking for the Lucians: she will never understand the US Military.

"Gonna need their beaming technology once we find the Dakara Device," Cam says innocently. "I'm bettin' it's too big for Samantha to slip into her pocket."

Dani thinks of the time machine they found on P4X-639. A lot of the Ancient technology they've come across is constructed on a cyclopean scale.

"You're probably right," Sammy says (playing to the gallery just as Cam is; they no longer know who might be listening). "And that way, all we have to do is locate it and tag it."

"And then stand back," Cam says.

Clock's ticking, and Anubis is still out there. Somewhere. Following some unknown timetable. If _she_ knew where a device was that could wipe out the opposition, she wouldn't waste her time conquering everybody one by one. She'd use it.

Why isn't Anubis?

Cam goes off to talk to General Landry (about borrowing the family car, he says), and Sammy goes to Medical to arrange for the tretonin. Teal'c is off to Dakara to bring Master Bra'tac up to date (and to see if he's willing to dangle a ship in front of the Lucians, just in case).

That leaves her.

Sally said the formula for tretonin (which General Landry said they were on no account to hand over; yes, she was listening) was in the SGC database. It isn't hard to find. The screen shows her something almost like mathematics. Chemistry. Math and chemistry are two of the hard sciences. Science is apparently graded on a Mohs scale, and archaeology is fairly low on it. Of course, anthropology is lower. And down in the realm of talc, there's sociology, of course...

She doesn't understand what she's seeing. But she can reproduce it. (She thinks of Heliopolis, of the dancing glowing atoms, the universal language she never had the chance to translate, a language couched in the unambiguous absolutes of the building blocks of matter.)

She draws carefully, copying it over and over onto sheets of vellum. Nothing but the information itself is here to connect the pages to Earth; both the vellum and the ink are of offworld origin.

Perhaps someone—the Lucian Alliance, the Free Jaffa, anyone—will find it. Perhaps they'll believe it. Perhaps they'll _use_ it.

No way to know. Message in a bottle, sent to an unknown future that may never come.

It's all she can do.

Not this war, but the next one.

And that's Monday.

#

Tuesday is spent coming up with a message for Ba'al. They won't send it from here, of course (they have no idea what information is transmitted through a _vo'cuum_ aside from voice and image), but there are plenty of entirely desolate places they can send it from. There are two pieces of information they need to provide Ba'al with: the fact that Anubis means to wipe out all life in the universe using the Ancient Device, and the fact the Jaffa are gathering for a summit.

Deciding how much information to include, and how truthful to be involves a lot of back-and-forthing. "No" to telling Ba'al the weapon is on his throneworld (even though, if Vala delivered the message to him, he already knows), "yes" to giving him the actual true location of the summit meeting (something on which Master Bra'tac, not General Landry, has the final say, not that Dani intends to bother General Landry with that information).

They decide to frame their message to Ba'al in the context of one of Vala's agents reporting in. Dani will wear a voice modulator to record the message (and they'll just have to hope that Vala has _Goa'uld_ minions). Sammy will construct a shroud for the _vo'cuum_ so none of them can be seen. It's Cam's idea to overlay the recording with static and start it in the middle of a sentence. They can't risk using the wrong forms and titles. (This would be a lot simpler if Vala Mal Doran had left them a forwarding address. On the other hand, Dani isn't sure what she'd do with that information.)

Drafting the message doesn't take the whole day, but the rest of the day (and every spare moment in the rest of the week) is spent combing the files for everything she has on _Goa'uld_ throneworlds (the only one they've been able to map in detail is Chulak, but that's a start). Crosschecking what data they have allows her to put together a not-very-reliable map of what they might find on the ground on Dakara. At least the _Goa'uld_ are creatures of habit, so the variations in layout aren't extensive. But the map isn't accurate, and everybody knows it.

Wednesday they go back to Chulak to talk to Master Bra'tac again. Getting the tretonin to Chulak with her Trojan horses intact is just about the only bright spot in the week (for values of "the week" encompassing only her time in BDUs). Of course, the purpose of the Trojan Horse was to destroy Troy; she hopes hers will have the opposite effect.

The visit brings a mix of good news and bad news. Master Bra'tac is disinclined to inject a _Tau'ri_ agenda into the Jaffa Summit, and even if he weren't, he wouldn't send the tretonin by ship, because there won't be any ships allowed to orbit Dar Eshkalon; Teal'c says that for obvious reasons (obvious to who?) all the delegates will be arriving by Stargate. He agrees to allow _Odyssey_ to "assist in the liberation of Dakara and the Jaffa Nation" (assuming that's how things come out), though, and gives them a rendezvous point to wait at (Sammy will have to spend a couple of hours with Teal'c to translate it into something Colonel Emerson can figure out, but that's the least of their worries); he'll transmit a signal when the combined fleet is underway.

If they don't get a signal, they'll go anyway, and hope they can find a way to get to the surface and destroy the device. (This would be a lot more likely to work if the Lucians spontaneously decided to attack the center of Anubis's power and wipe out one of the last of the System Lords at the same time.) It would make everything so much easier if they could ask Master Bra'tac to get a message to the Lucians, but the Free Jaffa (allegedly) have no Lucian contacts. 

Because Ba'al's spies may already have passed him the information, Master Bra'tac agrees it would be wise to use the actual location of the summit in their message to Ba'al. Because they may not have, they're going to make the transmission the day of the summit.

At least General Landry has okayed another try at contacting the Lucians (without risking one of the 303s), so while they're on Chulak, SG-12 is dropping off a letter (hand calligraphed on parchment letterhead with official seals) in a village on a planet that may-or-may-not have ties to the Lucian Alliance. It's written in English, of course, but since the Lucians may just possibly not be English-literate, it's also written in _Goa'uld_. (Translating "United States Air Force" into _Goa'uld_ was one of the stranger challenges of her SGC career.)

Of course, they can't put the one thing the Lucians really need to know into a letter: that there's an Ancient Galaxy-scrubbing weapon on Dakara that really needs to be destroyed before Anubis uses it. And the Lucians probably wouldn't believe them if they did.

And that's Wednesday.

Thursday her email queue is clogged with message from people who've heard that Simon is dead (the NID must have decided on its cover story and released the body). They vary from clueless expressions of sympathy, to attempts to extract insider information, to Steven (Raynor), who suggests she's probably glad to know that Simon's finally dead and oh by the way he gave her address to the lawyer handling Simon's estate.

She's surprised to discover Steven even knows. She knows Steven never got back in touch with Simon, after. Couldn't bear to. Osiris had killed David, not Simon, but it was Simon's body that struck the blow. They'd been friends, once, all of them, but she'd been obsessed with her work, shutting the world out. Now David and Simon are dead, and she might as well be (in academic terms). Steven's the last of them. He may be a vulgar popularizer, but at least he's still working in his original field.

Nothing about Thursday is anything but soul-deadening. She spends half of it recording the message they're going to send to Ba'al (listening to herself with the voice distorter in place makes her flinch), and the other half interviewing Candidate Number Three-and-last. By phone, since he's in England on a research sabbatical.

Dr. Krishna Bandopadhyay has (she quickly realizes) absolutely no interest in the position. But he keeps pressing her for information anyway: where is it located (the United States), what would his duties involve (research, translation, cataloging, some lectures), who would he be working for? (All she can tell him about that is "the United States government", which is wonderfully vague.) He's brilliant, and his qualifications are amazing, but he has tenure at Brown and in his place she wouldn't make the jump either (probably). She brings the conversation to a close as gracefully as she can and emails Caitlin Wong to offer her the job. (And to hope she's as eager for it as she seemed; the thought of working with McLaughlin might just be the proverbial straw.)

It doesn't help that there's increasing pressure on General Landry (meaning, when it comes down to it, on them) to find an "acceptable" way of getting their hands on the Dakara Device. Cam spends a lot of time in meetings (from most of which she is, thankfully, excused) trying to delicately explain to the General and the various Pentagon advisers who show up to rubberneck that the SGC has _never_ successfully invaded an active _Goa'uld_ throneworld, and doing his best to tactfully shoot down suggestions. (The one that charms her most is the idea of knocking on the door with a Gatebuster: not only would it probably vaporize what they're looking for—and that's if it actually _worked_ —but it would end the hope of Jaffa cooperation. With each other and with Earth.)

She keeps thinking about Cam's remark about nuking the Vatican: it would be a compelling argument if anybody at the table was willing to think of the Jaffa as something other than superstitious barbarians. After one meeting, Cam makes an atypically acid comment about "the White Man's Burden". 

She knows her Kipling; he doesn't need to draw her a map.

And that's Thursday.

On Friday morning Teal'c leaves for Chulak again. They won't see him again until either they rendezvous with Master Bra'tac's fleet or things go so disastrously wrong that he comes back to warn them.

Dani hugs him goodbye, only realizing how much she doesn't want him to go after he's gone. Teal'c's departure feels like a misstep, a wrong choice that will cost them dearly further down the road. And she can't think why. But there's no choice: they don't get to go to the Jaffa Summit (no _Tau'ri_ observers need apply), and because of that, they won't know until afterward whether Master Bra'tac's plan to derail a Sodan takeover of the Jaffa (with bonus crusade to retake Dakara), is going to work, or if Lord Haikon is going to kill him, because _Jomo Secu_ is a rite that doesn't allow either party to nominate a champion. The challenged and the challenger fight in their own persons. That's the whole point. Might makes right. The strongest wins.

The other thing about _Jomo Secu_ is that you can't just say "no, thanks". It's an automatic loss.

They won't know what happens on Dar Eshkalon until it's too late.

But Plan A is based on the idea that everything will work just the way they want it to, so much of her Friday (Cam is still in meetings, and she can't imagine what he's saying that he hasn't already said a dozen times before) is spent combing through the database for a sufficiently out-of-the-way place to send their message to Ba'al from. When she can catch Cam and Sammy to get their votes, the winner is P2X-238: Marduk's throneworld. The entire planet is barren of any life more advanced than desert grass; the ziggurat is the only thing on the planet and they blew that up, and Marduk is dead (very), so it's a good choice. Dani makes the mistake of wondering how there can be grass (or oxygen) when there isn't any water, and Sammy treats her to a thirty-minute lecture on xenoecology and the liberation of oxygen from rocks by erosion.

They're all on edge. 

One week to the summit.

#

Cam says all problems are simple when you look at them for long enough. (Jack said that if you avoid dealing with a problem for long enough it becomes a different problem; she finds herself thinking about him more these days, as if something once forbidden is now permitted.) On Friday, she's pretty sure they've only got one problem: pointing the Jaffa at Dakara and Ba'al at Dar Eshkalon at more or less the same time.

Saturday morning she finds out she's wrong.

"Gotta head back in to the office," Cam says, kissing her good morning. She looks, bleary-eyed, at his bedside clock. 0730. He's sitting on the edge of her side of the bed, still damp from his morning shower.

"You were going to tell me this when?" she demands, sitting up. Because he knew, of course he knew, he knew it last night. No need to set his clock; Cam's an early riser at the worst of times.

"Didn't want you to worry," he says, handing over her glasses. 

"Because I wouldn't," she says flatly.

"Last night," he says. "I didn't want you to worry about it _last night_."

Later, she supposes, she might be angry about this care-by-omission. Now she just wants information. "It's tomorrow morning now," she says (with justifiable inexactitude). "So what's going on?"

He stands as she sits up, moving over to the closet and taking out clothes. Dress Blues.

"Planning meeting for the Dakara strike," he says.

" _What_ Dakara strike?" she asks.

He bows his head for a moment, his back to her, and she knows that whatever is coming is going to be bad.

"The Joint Chiefs have agreed that securing the Dakara Device is a matter of utmost importance, and for that reason, we will receive their full support. _Odyssey_ is being reconfigured to hold Heliotrope Wing in addition to its own interceptors. We'll be taking all four SGC Marine units with us, plus additional personnel to be determined over the next few days." His voice is toneless.

She shakes her head, trying to make sense of this. They're going to _invade Dakara?_ Them? The _Tau'ri?_ All they have is one 303 and a couple of dozen 302s. An _al'kesh_ can take out a 302 easily—they did over Antarctica. And Ba'al probably has hundreds of them.

"I'm coming with you," she says, scrambling to her feet.

"Don't," Cam says. 

She stops.

"There's nothing you can do to make this go away," he says. "They've made up their minds. I'm gonna do what I can to steer them, but..."

But "General" trumps "Colonel" and there's probably going to be more than one at the SGC today.

"When?" she asks.

"Plan's still to use the Jaffa summit to decoy Ba'al away from home," Cam says. "If that doesn't work, I expect we go in anyway. Gonna try to convince them to wait on the Jaffa. Don't know how much luck I'm going to have."

He's dressing as he talks, turning himself into someone else, and fury, confusion, and despair have filled her so full that she can't feel any of them. "Do we go too?" she asks.

"Still to be determined," Cam says, and she has a sudden flash of suspicious dread that, no matter who else is aboard _Odyssey_ , she won't be. Who'd take an archaeologist to a war?

She sits back down. "Be careful," she says uselessly. But the danger isn't here and now. The danger's coming. And it's the same thing they lost Colonel Polanco to (lost Jack, lost Stan Kovacek's team, lost too many to count): _not listening._

"Yeah," Cam says.

Cam listens. He always has. But this time, it isn't doing any good.

#

When he's gone, she calls Sammy. It goes straight to voice mail, but despite her unavailability, Dani doesn't think Sammy knows. (Sammy would have told her; Cam's good intentions be damned.) Sammy isn't the one who's been dragged into all those meetings. Sammy's not the former commander of Heliotrope Flight. Not the ( _de facto_ if not _de jure_ ) leader of SG-1. And it doesn't matter to any of those other people that both Colonel Samantha Carter and Dr. Danielle Jackson have more offworld experience, can tell them how futile a ground assault is on any _Goa'uld_ stronghold, can remind them that this is a fight for Jaffa freedom and trying to hijack that fight just to gain one more useless weapon for Earth will alienate their strongest allies.

At least General Hammond will be in the meeting. He has to be. Homeworld knows about this—this is what Homeworld is _for_. Protecting Earth.  
But Disclosure is coming, and with the IOA taking over the Stargate, Homeworld will be over and done. She has no idea what will replace it (probably the IOA doesn't either), but it means even General Hammond isn't the final authority here. Not this time. (If they fail, there won't be a next time.)

She calls Sammy again while she's dressing. Still no answer.

#

"I can't believe they'd..." Sammy says slowly.

They're in Sammy's kitchen. Dani's given her an edited and annotated summary of Cam's morning news. (Sammy missed her two previous calls because of a morning jog and subsequent shower.)

"Just pull a General Bauer?" Dani says bitterly. "Why not? It worked so well the last time." During the two weeks of his command, they lost three teams.

"If the Dakara Device isn't neutralized," Sammy says, "and Anubis activates it..." She stops. "It's risking a few hundred lives to save billions of people, Dani."

"Trillions," Dani says. "Everyone in the galaxy. All of whom will still die if _this doesn't work._ "

And if the three of them don't get to the Dakara Device first, the _best_ they can hope for is getting it back to Earth, where Area 51 will use it to make new and better weapons. And if the Jaffa ever find out the _Tau'ri_ double-crossed them and looted their sacred site...

"I don't know what to tell you," Sammy says. "We came up with the best plan we could, and it still wasn't a very good one."

"No," Dani says quietly. "It wasn't, was it?"

Sammy hugs her. "Go home," she says. "Get some rest. Next week's going to be rough."

"I know."

#

Dani sees General Hammond on Sunday. He's on his way back to Washington, but he suggests she come by Josie's house so he can see her before he leaves. (She's alone when he calls, pacing the rooms of Jack's house as if they're a prison; both Paul and Cam are still at the Mountain.)

She goes, hoping for some last minute reprieve, some strategy that will give them victory. Some things, she has learned, can only be spoken of in an atmosphere of plausible deniability. She isn't surprised to see that she and General Hammond are the only ones here. He takes her into Josie's kitchen and offers her coffee, sitting down with her at the breakfast bar. He's still in his uniform. It feels strange. She's never seen him in his uniform here.

"Why don't you sit this one out, Dr. Jackson?" he says, once the courtesies have been observed. "I'm not saying you're a liability in the field. God knows you've proven your ability time and again. But you know," he adds apologetically, "this isn't really your sort of mission."

_And you think they're all going to die and you don't want me to die with them._

She doesn't say that. Doesn't say she doesn't mind dying, doesn't say she wants to die with Cam, if dying is what has to happen. (Doesn't speak the hidden truth that would hurt them both: the Pentagon, President Hayes, want her alive for Disclosure, and General Hammond has been told to arrange it.)

But there's always a Plan B. Always. And so she takes a deep breath, and smiles, and says:

"I still need to go to P2X-238," she says, "just in case we get a reply, because it's probably going to be in _Goa'uld_ if we do and Teal'c won't be there. But you're right, sir. I'm pretty short for a Marine." (And not field-qualified with the P90, so she'd be facing down the Legions of Hell with a Beretta and two spare clips.)

General Hammond smiles, accepting the answer she (against all expectation and history) gives him, the answer his superiors will want. "That's good, then," he says. "And Dr. Jackson? You know as well as I do that we're bringing a knife to a gun fight. I just want you to know that Henry and I fought this all the way to the top and we were both shot down. He did his best for all of you."

"Thank you, sir," she says. "That's good to know. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"SG-1 always has been," General Hammond says. "I owe my third star to the fact you always came back, no matter what."

"We always come back," she answers.

Even from the Gates of Hell.

#

Dr. Jackson always packs her own gear.

Everybody knows that.

But this mission isn't going to need her archeological tools, or her notebooks; not duct tape, or socks, or even a good supply of chocolate.

She packs very carefully. (There's always a Plan B.)

The whole SGC is on stand-down all week, every mission cancelled until SG-1 walks through the Gate on Friday. The Marines are off somewhere trying to hammer the basics of offworld combat into two on-loan companies of Marine Special Operations; the SGC is oddly silent (at least in her imagination) in their absence. Two companies is only 160 people, but there's a limit to the number of bodies you can cram into _Odyssey_ in addition to thirty 302s and their crews. (And a Gatebuster as the Court of Last Resort, but by the time Dani finds out about that, she's past caring. It's all a game of "Let's Pretend", and to lose is to die.)

They don't hear from Teal'c.

She's spun General Landry a tale of the vital importance of her presence on 238: going there is still part of the plan, and they need Sammy for that (otherwise Cam and Sammy would be loaded up with the rest of the crews when _Odyssey_ leaves the day before.)

She tells Cam she'll Gate back to Earth as soon as the two of them are beamed up ( _Odyssey_ is going to meet them at 238, and should already be in orbit when they arrive). Or before, if he prefers, even if 238 is completely deserted and perfectly safe. (If you bring enough water with you, that is.)

The only gift she can give Cam is the pretense of optimism, so she does. His relief that she isn't going with them is enough to tell her everything he won't say aloud. He's away overnight (Tuesday and Wednesday): back to Nowhere Field to brief the pilots. He doesn't ask her to go with him and she doesn't suggest it. Everything is business as usual, and _Odyssey_ will be back at Nellis early next week and everybody will be aboard and everything will be fine. A milk run. No reason to orchestrate final goodbyes.

But she thinks about them. She's thought about Jack, lost in stasis and then lost forever. She's thought about Cam, lost on Tok'Ishkur. 

She has so much more, now, to lose than she's ever had before.

So she packs very carefully, and well in advance.

Then it's Friday, and they're in the Control Room, geared up, waiting. _Odyssey_ makes her check-in from 238, right on schedule. General Landry tells them they have a "go". She and Sammy are both carrying cases of equipment for the _vo'cuum_. Her pack is heavier than usual, and it's a struggle to manage that and the case, but she tries not to show it. She's left her quarterstaff behind. She won't need it where she's going, and she needs one hand free.

Standing on the ramp, waiting for the activation, is nerve-wracking, and she knows her nervousness shows. But she's got an excuse, if anyone asks. And because they think they know what it is, they don't.

She wishes Teal'c were here.

The three of them step through.

"Whoa!" Cam says in protest, sucking air. 238 is as hot as the Sahara, its sun is high overhead, and the air is so dry it sucks away their sweat before it forms. "Next time, _I_ pick the secret hideout!" He doesn't wait for an answer, bouncing down the steps and turning away to radio _Odyssey_ , checking in. 

The two of them follow, more slowly. There's still some of the complex left standing, and Sammy heads in that direction. "We know the larger _vo'cuum_ is designed to work with a Gate," she says. "It's probably a good idea to at least get out of line of sight before activating this one."

"Sure," Dani says. Her forehead prickles with salt crystals; the sweat drying the instant it forms. Sweat trickles underneath her layers of pack and tactical vest and clothing.

(Don't let either Sammy or Cam wonder why she's carrying a pack today.)

They round a corner and Sammy sets down her carrying case, kneeling beside it on the sun-baked clay. Dani sets hers beside it and leans back against the wall. It's no cooler here than it was out in the open, and the wall is blocking what little breeze there is. It's like standing inside an oven.

"You know," Sammy says, "I was sure you'd be over there with Cam right now, arguing that you ought to come with us." (The current plan, at least as of when _Odyssey_ left, is to send Cam, Sammy, and SG-3 down to Dakara before everyone else, to reconnoiter.) 

"General Hammond asked me not to," Dani says quietly. 

Sammy looks up sharply. Suspicion and guilt. "Dani—" she says.

"It's okay," Dani says. It isn't and it can never be (nothing can be if she's alive and Cam is dead), but she knows Sammy will accept her answer rather than starting a conversation neither of them has time for. Not here. Not now.

The shrouding device for the _vo'cuum_ is essentially a cylinder of (very high tech) black foam. The only direction the device should be able to see anything is straight up (if it _can_ see in that direction, something they don't know). The stand Sammy's built for the _vo'cuum_ itself is also the playback device for Dani's message. There's a time-delay before it starts, then the message will repeat three times (with a different section garbled each time) before shutting down. Since they have no way to turn off the _vo'cuum_ without exposing themselves, they're going to zat it out of existence when they're done.

Sammy sets the little silver ball on its stand, activates the playback, puts the cowling shield around it, and quickly reaches in to activate the device. The two of them back away as if it might explode (which it might, who knows?) Cam is just coming around the corner to join them; Dani holds up her hand and he stops where he is. The message begins. 

Her voice, distorted and flanged, echoes off the ancient crumbling mud bricks. It takes longer than she expects for the playback to finish. When it does, the three of them share a moment of expectant silence, then Cam draws his zat and fires. Once, twice, and the conjoined devices are spitting blue sparks. Three times and it's gone, leaving behind nothing but a damp patch on the ground that lingers only for a moment.

"Now we go see if our fish takes the worm," Cam says. "Or maybe that should be the other way around." 

Dani realizes much too late that he's making a joke. Sammy closes up the (now empty) cases and gets to her feet. Cam takes them from her. She gives him a strained smile and turns away, walking toward the Gate.

It's just the two of them now. Dani looks at Cam. It would be more awkward, she thinks, if both his hands weren't occupied with the cases. More variables. She isn't sure what to do right now, who she should be. She's sure she looks terrified. She wonders if that's appropriate to the occasion.

"Walk you home?" he asks. He can't quite manage a smile, but she can feel that he's made peace with this. Not resignation, but acceptance. The job comes first, and sometimes dying is the job, no matter how hard you try to avoid doing that. (But they were supposed to die together: that's the happy ending.)

They walk side by side in silence. At the DHD he sets down the cases. Sammy looks questioningly at both of them as she comes over to them, but she doesn't say anything. There's really nothing left to say. (No hugging, no tears, no parting words. They've all done this too many times.)

As Sammy takes her place beside Cam, Dani says, "I want to watch," and Cam nods, and radios _Odyssey_ again as Dani steps away.

" _Odyssey,_ this is Colonel Mitchell. Two to beam up. You know, I've always wanted to—"

They're gone in a white flash of light.

Dani picks up the cases and goes up the steps to the Gate. She sets them down right in front of it, where they'll be vaporized by the incoming wormhole. Then she goes back down the steps again, and walks to the DHD, and dials.

She won't beg Cam's forgiveness, even in her imagination. She knows she'll never receive it. 

_Is it murder if you go willingly, even knowing you're being sent to die? Who's responsible? The people who give the orders, or the people who follow those orders? Exactly what crime is being committed here today? Murder? Suicide?_

A question that will never be answered. 

The event horizon stabilizes and she walks through it.

#

_In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran / Through caverns measureless to man / Down to a sunless sea._

Oannes is much as she remembered it, a garden spot of fumaroles and venting gasses (which randomly ignite, for added fun). A striped gas giant takes up most of the sky, and two enormous moons are silhouetted against it. The smaller one is at least four times larger than Earth's (the combination, she thinks, is enough to account for the constant seismic activity), and the cluttered prismatic sky is enough to induce atavistic fears of being crushed. _The sky is falling._ The air is thick with smoke and industrial stinks, though nothing (as far as their long-ago survey could discover) lives and builds on the surface. Oannes has only one inhabitant, and he lives in a drowned city mourning a murdered love.

The shore of the ocean beneath which Nem lives is far enough away from the Gate that she thinks he won't notice (or will at least ignore) her presence. She pulls off her pack and sits down on the steps. After 238, Oannes seems arctic, and she shivers, wishing she had dry clothes. She needs to wait at least a couple of hours before proceeding to her next destination, and this is the safest place she knows. Most of the others have friends or enemies or biohazards or dangerous life forms, and the last thing she needs is to die ahead of schedule. Or leave any clue for future historians as to where she's gone.

She takes a drink from her canteen. Something in the air makes the water taste of sulfur, and she has to force herself to drink as much as she knows she needs. When she's finished, she opens her pack. The Sodan gauntlet is there, tucked in on top of the fuses and grenades and blocks of C4—enough (maybe) to cripple the Dakara Device.

If she can find it.

She fills her pockets with grenades; if she needs them, she's going to need them in a hurry. The C4, the fuses, and the detonator she leaves in her pack; it will take time to place and set them, and she'll either have it or she won't. Last of all she pushes up her sleeve and slips the gauntlet over her left arm. It's adjustable, and she cinches it tight before pulling her sleeve back down. It's simple enough to operate: push the green gem in the middle to turn it on, push it again to turn it off. She activates it now (just to be sure), and the landscape around her shifts into a halated expanse of violet and murky green. It's as if she's put on a set of novelty glasses that strip the red and yellow from the images; the effect is oddly disturbing and she shuts it off again.

At least she'll know when it's working.

There's nothing then to do but sit and wonder and worry. Will Ba'al get the message? Will he use it as a suitable pretext to strip Dakara of its defenses? Does he know where the Dakara Device actually is (Vala does), or will he assume (as they worked so hard to imply in their message) that it's somewhere else? Is he looking for it right now? Has he found it?

So many questions.

Can Bra'tac beat Haikon? Can he convince the other Jaffa factions to join him in taking Dakara for their own? Can they mass their fleets in time? If Lord Haikon won't withdraw his challenge—or at least defer it until after Dakara—will Teal'c die too?

She'll never know any of the answers.

But her last message, if she can send it (if anyone receives it) will at least allow _Odyssey_ to divert before it tries to land ground forces. Or if not that, then at least keep the Dakara Device out of _Tau'ri_ hands.

Or this might not work at all.

Save Cam? Save Earth? Save the galaxy? Or just not be the one who survives: she isn't sure exactly what she's going for here. She only knows she has to try.

_Decision's made._

#

By the end of three hours, the stench no longer registers. Time to go. She closes the backpack and clips it into place, then gets to her feet. Down the steps. Dial. Activate the cloaking device. She draws her pistol, takes a last deep breath, and walks up the steps and through.

Dakara.

She flings herself flat on the stones and scrambles sideways, falling off the edge of the platform before she realizes nobody is shooting at her. She lands on sloping ground covered in soft dust made a pale dull purple by the spectral shift and frantically strangles her choking coughs. But there's no one to hear.

She sits up cautiously, blinking as she looks around. Waning sunset light, but the shadows are wrong for sunset. There's an ancient star in the sky, so dark and old it shows a visible disk. She stares at it for a fascinated moment before realizing that probably isn't a really good idea. She blinks, looking around. No temple, no pyramids, no people. There's nothing here but ruins. It's cold, and a constant wind stirs little dust devils on ground that looks as if it hasn't been walked on in centuries. 

_This_ is Dakara? _This_ is Ba'al's throneworld?

She gets to her feet. The cloaking device distortion makes everything look unreal, but this much is clear: nobody's here. _And none of those maps I spent the last week on are going to do anybody the least good,_ she thinks half-hysterically.

The ruins—broken walls, incomplete temples, forests of pillars standing like abandoned trees, the remains of a vast rose-red (probably) city half as old as Time—are arranged on the vast circular hill that surrounds this open space. It's terraced, and tall enough to block any view of what lies beyond: ruins line all three concourses. At the far end, opposite the Gate (perhaps two miles away, see: cyclopean architecture of the Ancients) is what she first takes for a natural rock outcropping incorporated into the design. Then she sees the sharp unmistakable lines of brickwork, and the age-softened contours of what once might have been a seated figure twenty stories tall. There's something oddly familiar about it; her eyes flick automatically to the ancient statue's feet, finding the colonnade she expects to see before she remembers _why_ she expects to see it. Then antic memory, busy and lush with footnote and cross-reference, catches up to intuition and she staggers, sinking in a half-controlled fall to the steps of the Gate platform.

P3X-439. The Ancient Repository. A statue and a line of pillars and an ambush, and that was where all this began, with the threat of Anubis and Jack's slow dying. She breathes slowly against the nausea and faintness, unable to tell whether she's graying out or if this is some new trick of the cloaking device. It's fitting, she supposes, that her end and her beginning are mirror images.

At least she knows she's come to the right place.

She's so convinced she's come to a dead and empty world that the sound she hears makes her flinch disproportionately, heart hammering in panic. It's a sound like tearing silk, a familiar sound, and she looks up to see flight after flight of hawk-winged Death Gliders soaring past the crown of the temple, flying in escort formation around the strange pelagic shapes of _al'kesh_. At first she thinks they've come for her, that she's failed before she's begun, but there are too many to be searching out one lone interloper. Within heartbeats, the wedge-shaped formation spreads to fill the sky, the shadows cast by its passage racing across the ground and over the ancient (Ancient) stones. The first ones vanish into orbit before the last appear. There must be thousands of them, but she lacks the gift of augury to take a proper omen from their flight.

Then they're gone, and Dakara is silent once more. But not—she knows now—uninhabited. She realizes she's clutching the butt of her pistol hard enough to make her hands cramp, and forces herself to holster it. It won't help her here.

She takes a moment to savor the utter insanity of one woman armed with forty pounds of C4 and a dozen grenades attacking a _Goa'uld_ throneworld, then moves—carefully, cautiously—around the back of the Gate. The ruins are closest here, and they'll provide better concealment than walking straight up to the colonnade, invisible or not. (She'd leave footprints, if nothing else.) 

She breathes a little easier once she reaches the shadows of the first of the ruins, and takes a moment to rest. She doesn't know who might be watching, or what technology they might be using to watch. Her head is pounding with tension, and she's conscious of every footprint she leaves, every sound she makes. But she can't stop. She has to get to the temple.

She gets her bearings, chooses the next part of her route, and moves on. Some of the weathered stones still bear the marks of their builders: Ancient writing whose meaning is lost through age, destruction, and her own incomplete understanding. She glances again and again toward the vast empty central space and wonders what it once was: park? Parade ground? Landing field? Or merely a part of the city constructed of materials less durable than those which survive?

Even stone weathers away to dust, given enough time.

#

There are many sentences that can make a man's blood run cold with terror. Over the course of his military career, Cameron Mitchell has heard most of them. He keeps a mental list, just for his own amusement, a joke few people are likely to get.

One he never expected to add to it is this:

"Is Dr. Jackson with you, Colonel Mitchell?"

He's on the bridge of _Odyssey_. They're at what Master Bra'tac called _Sekki'Petet Corridor_ and what Sam calls by a string of numbers too long for him to remember. There's been a certain amount of discussion over how long they're going to sit here: Colonel Emerson says they'll give it twelve hours. They're making their first check-in with the SGC while they wait for Master Bra'tac and his buddies to show up, and General Landry has just asked Momma Mitchell's blue-eyed boy the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. 

Colonel Emerson looks at him. Cam has to swallow hard before he can reply. "Sir. No, sir, she isn't. We left her back on 238; she said she was coming right home."

There's an eloquent pause on the SGC end, long enough for Cam to damn Little Miss's duplicitous soul to Hell and his own right along with her. What in the name of everything sacred had ever made him entertain for one moment the airy notion she'd either stay out of this fight or do as she was told?

"SG-6 went to P2X-238 half an hour after Colonel Emerson reported you and Colonel Carter were aboard. They reported no sign of Dr. Jackson," General Landry says. "Do you have any notion of where Dr. Jackson might be, Colonel Mitchell?" 

Cam tries not to wince. "No sir. But if she decided to take off on her own—" which she very clearly has "—she might have tried to hook up with Teal'c at the Jaffa Summit."

Which is a damned long shot, but if she went to Chulak first, Cam bets she could talk her way into an escort to Dar Eshkalon.

It's better than thinking that—somehow—Ba'al followed their signal and grabbed her.

"Understood," General Landry says. "Colonel Mitchell, if you happen to see her, do tell her I would appreciate it if she returned to Stargate Command."

"Yes, sir," Cam says. "I will do that."

"Colonel Emerson, your next check-in is in two hours unless you make contact with the Jaffa fleet before that."

Emerson acknowledges. The bridge seems unnaturally quiet when the comm channel closes.

"I'll just—" Cam says, waving toward the hatch. Space Command is a hybrid thing: Air Force personnel and wet Navy protocol. He's on the bridge by invitation and he needs permission to leave.

Colonel Emerson is about to speak when Major Marks beats him to it.

"Colonel, we are being hailed."

#

It takes her hours to work her way around the edge of the circle of ruins. She's moving slower than a slow walk, each foot lifted and placed with excruciating care, and her muscles ache with the strain. There could be traps, deadfalls, god knows what kind of poisonous insect life. Even a displaced stone could betray her.

The sun sets as she creeps along, sending shadows stretching from the Stargate to the temple colonnade, but she can still see as clearly as before. It looks like the Sodan cloaking device has built-in night goggles, which is a good thing as she didn't think to bring any (she will not think of what else she might have forgotten to bring, and what that failure might cost).

She reaches the ruins above the right side of the colonnade, and settles in behind a pillar. If there's anything to see, the more time she takes, the better chance she has of spotting it. She digs a monocular out of her vest and lifts it to her eye. Aside from a really good view of some weathered Ancient letters on the entablature, there's nothing but shadows.

A flash of light bright enough to cast the frontis into sudden bright relief makes her look up.

The sky is a phase-shifted violet, still too bright for stars (if there are stars in Dakara's sky). But it's filled with strobe-like flashes, brief staccato shooting stars, and, abruptly, one slow sun-bright flare that swells and fades. Something big exploding.

She has no point of reference—no _Tau'ri_ does—for what a space battle might look like from the ground (she's seen plenty from the middle of them). But she knows what she's seeing, because Teal'c adores _Star Wars_ and owns every possible version of it (and all the other ones). Only this time it isn't a matter of one Imperial Cruiser and a Rebel blockade runner. The lights cover half the sky. Miles above her, two fleets are clashing, and she can only hope one of them is Master Bra'tac's.

She's out of time.

She takes one more glance at the temple and begins to climb down the side of the terrace. When she reaches it, she sees that the colonnade doesn't mask a solid wall. Instead, it's the entrance to a temple complex. There are dim flickers coming from somewhere inside: torches.

This place is in use. 

_"I'm going to give you to him. It will distract him."_

_This_ is Ba'al's temple. Here, in the heart of the Ancient ruins. There's no point in her (or the invaders to come) looking for the classic pyramid complex, a temple built along Akkadian lines. They won't find one. She can only hope Ba'al's occupied by the battle above. Him and all the Jaffa who should be here.

But the battle in the sky means _Odyssey_ will be landing ground forces soon. Once they do, it will be too late.

She steps into the dark.

Her boot-soles grate on wind-blown sand, and she nearly falls down the flight of steps just inside the entrance before her eyes (or the cloaking device) adjust to the darkness. The architecture is halfway between _Goa'uld_ Classic and the photos she's seen of Atlantis, as if Atlantis was what the Ancients had actually wanted to build here on Dakara but were defeated by the unforgiving stone. She moves automatically toward the nearest wall. The corridor is long and wide, the dimensions of the space giving it a sense of airy openness, even though it's at the bottom of thousands of tons of rock. Without the Sodan gauntlet, she suspects, she wouldn't be able to see anything at all. Even in daylight, she doesn't think the sunlight reaches this far inside. Except at dawn, she realizes. The sun set right behind the Stargate; when it rises, it will shine directly through the temple opening. She thinks of the pyramid on Abydos, of all the ancient temples oriented to the rising and setting sun. She wonders what the sun symbolized to the Ancients, or if the orientation of the temple just means they were neat freaks. (And the point is moot right now anyway, because it's night.)

The torches she saw from outside are a few yards down the corridor; there's another set further down, distance reducing them to floating perspectiveless sparks of fire against an undifferentiated darkness. She tries to slow and silence her panicky breathing, and wishes for an instant that she'd come up with some sort of failsafe that would _kill her_ if she's captured. Because capture, she knows, is not going to end well, and she came here expecting to search ruins rather than _invade Ba'al's palace_. But what she's looking for has to be here, because the ruins outside are fragmentary, and Khalek wouldn't have needed to distract Ba'al if the Ancient Device weren't somewhere he was likely to be. Which means...here.

There are archways on each side of the main corridor, but the pillars and voussoirs frame nothing but shallow alcoves. They might be doors, but she has no way to open them. She thinks longingly of _ha'taks_ she has known and loved: there was always somewhere to go on a _ha'tak_ when you were running away from somebody. Or trying to sneak somewhere. Ducts, corridors, hidden passageways... Here, there's only one way to go. She forces herself to move forward, keeping one hand on the wall to guide her, counting her steps. 

She reaches the next set of torches. There are approximately 1500 paces to a mile, but she isn't taking full steps. Call it 3000 paces, then. By that reckoning, she's come about a third of a mile. When she glances back the way she's come, she can't see the entrance. _Miles to go,_ she thinks. _Miles to go before I sleep._ The torches are a fairly standard design; a long cone in a metal bracket. The flame at the tip rises straight up, burning steadily in the still air.

Still air.

No drafts. No air circulation. She closes her eyes at the realization. Wherever this corridor leads, it's to a dead end. Or a sealed door that she might not be able to open. Opening a door, if she finds one, will give away her presence, invisible or not, but the real question isn't whether there's somebody on the other side of the door, but whether there's someone on _this_ side of it (if there's a door). She looks back up at the torch. It doesn't give much light, but if she passes directly beneath it, she might (who knows?) cast a shadow. She steps cautiously to the center of the corridor, between the pools of light the torches cast. She wishes she could use her flashlight, even for just a second. Something to tell her what's ahead. Something has to be. Nobody leaves the back way into their palace unguarded, not even if it's sealed off, because you could bring anything in here—like the energy-canon off a Death Glider—and blast your way in while keeping anyone trying to stop you bottled up at the other end of the hall.

She guesses going-on-nine years of breaking and entering has finally taught her something. 

She takes a cautious step forward, then another. And stops, but the footsteps don't stop. There's someone else here. She takes a deep breath, reaching for one of her grenades. And stops. What if it's Free Jaffa? It could be; the Free Jaffa have agents within Ba'al's forces. What if it's Cam and Sammy? If they're wearing night goggles they wouldn't be showing a light. Sure, there's a battle going on overhead, but it only takes a second to beam somebody down to the surface. Or even directly in here. She wouldn't have seen it from outside. 

Her fingers close over the grenade. Pull the pin. Throw. Easy.

She can't do it. Not without _knowing._

She's going to have to risk a light.

She reaches for her flashlight, still holding the grenade in her right hand. Just a quick flash. Enough to see what's there. (Sodan warriors won't be wearing armor, Ba'al's Palace Guard should be wearing bull-headed armor...)

She flicks the light on, then off. The white brilliance slides over the surface of armor as black and smooth as glass.

Not Jaffa.

Kull Warriors. Two of them. She hears footsteps moving toward her—slow, ponderous; Kull Warriors don't _hurry_ —and backs away toward the wall. The grenade she's holding is useless: Kull armor is impervious to anything short of a transphase disruptor, and silly her, she forgot to bring one.

_"It isn't what you forget that's the problem,"_ Jack's voice says in memory. _"It's what you didn't think of in the first place."_

She didn't think she'd be facing Kull warriors. _Idiot. Did you think they were all on Tartarus?_

But the corridor is wide. She's invisible. They might walk right past her. She can outrun them. (If they don't just blast the whole corridor to be sure. If there's anywhere to go.) She flattens herself into the inadequate shelter of the nearest archway as they emerge from the darkness into the glow of the torches. They're walking side-by-side: never-living animated flesh and mindless symbiotes encased in impervious armor. If she doesn't wait until they're well past her, they'll hear her when she moves and turn back.

Then one of them stops.

The other doesn't seem to notice. It continues down the corridor. Then the one behind it raises its arm and fires. There's a crash as the Kull Warrior is flung forward and topples. It tries to rise to its feet, and the one standing behind it fires again. And again. The energy bolt is blue-white, blinding, light so intense it seems to have weight. The sound of its discharge bounces deafeningly off the stone.

Dani runs toward whatever lies at the end of the corridor, her arms stretched out before her in the darkness. The brush of stone against her fists gives her barely enough warning to roll sideways, softening the impact of her collision with a wall. Stone beneath her fingertips. Rough. Incised. She scrabbles along it desperately, but there's nothing to find, just the right angle where it meets the wall of the corridor. She pushes herself away and retraces her path across its face. If not here, surely on the other side? There has to be a passage, an exit, somewhere to _go_...

Footsteps coming toward her. Slow, ponderous, armored. She freezes in place, clutching the grenade and the flashlight, and wonders if she should just pull the pin and wait. But no. There's always, _always_ a Plan B. She just has to stay alive long enough to find it.

The footsteps stop. Why? She can't see anything, but if she risks a light, she throws away her last advantage, slim as it is. She waits. It's probably hoping she'll make a run for it.

"I can hear you, you know," an oddly-familiar voice says from the darkness.

Kull warriors can't talk.

Dani switches on the flashlight.

It's Vala Mal Doran in Kull Warrior armor. She's removed the helmet; she flinches away from Dani's light, raising a gauntleted hand to shield her eyes. Dani scrambles to stuff the grenade back into a pocket and presses the gem on the Sodan armband to shut it off. She flicks the beam of light toward her own face for an instant, then shines it toward the floor. She wanted to kill Vala once (yes, no, maybe). She helped Cam let her escape. She hoped she'd never have to think about her again, but she does, because she's here. 

"Danielle Jackson. You do turn up in the oddest places." Vala walks toward her.

"So do you." Her voice is hoarse with disuse. (She can't kill Vala. Vala can kill her. Is this a basis for trust? Does she have a choice?)

"Oh, but you see, I've been trying to get here for a very long time," Vala says. "You gave me the last piece of the puzzle. Thank you for that, by the way."

"You're welcome," Dani says automatically. "Vala, you have to help me. I'm looking for the Ancient Device—the one Khalek was going to activate. Anubis—"

"Turn around," Vala says. "You've found it."

Dani turns, and the light in her hand moves with her, illuminating the wall spanning the narrowed corridor, a wall completely covered in Ancient writing. There are five circles cut into the stone, and where they intersect the glyphs, some of them are broken. Relief makes her giddy. She fumbles her pack off and drops it to the floor. She kneels down beside it, propping her light against it and reaching in to pull out the blocks of C4.

"Not that this isn't fascinating," Vala says behind her, dropping the the Kull Armor to the floor piece by piece, "but what are you doing?"

"I'm going to blow it up." She slaps the first brick of C4 against the wall, pushing so it will stick.

"No you aren't." Vala's wearing just the black leotard that goes under the armor now. She grabs Dani's wrist. "Anubis's fleet is up there. And so is he."

Suddenly there's a bright flash as the world outside the temple goes white. The brightness is gone almost before Dani registers it, but the stone beneath her feet shakes grudgingly. There's dust in the air, and her light shows it skirling in air currents that show a crack has opened up somewhere. "Then this is a really good time to break this thing before he gets down here to turn it on," she says. She tries to pull her wrist free, but Vala is stronger than she is.

"No," Vala says. "It can kill him. That's what we have to do. Use it."

"But—" Dani says.

"Look," Vala says. "As soon as Anubis came back from banishment, my friends and I knew we had a problem. With Ra gone, the _Goa'uld_ were disorganized, fighting among themselves to see who was powerful enough to become Supreme System Lord in his place, and that was good—but Anubis put an end to it, and that _wasn't_ good. We had to get rid of him. We tried. Nothing worked. This will. The Ancients designed it to emit an energy wave that can disassemble matter into its basic elements—and reassemble them. It's powerful enough to affect everything on Dakara and its surrounding space."

"Kill everything, you mean," Dani says.

"No," Vala says. "It can be programmed. The Ancients sent the energy wave through the entire Gate network at the same time in order to affect the entire galaxy—that's the last thing Anubis is waiting for—but we don't need to. You may have noticed Anubis isn't quite like the others—"

"I was his host once," Dani says.

"And you survived. Lucky girl. Most don't. But the device will kill him, and unless you know a way of controlling the entire Gate network from here, Anubis needs to be close by—which, lucky for us, he happens to be at this very moment. With Anubis gone, his Kull Warriors stop fighting."

Suddenly, belatedly, she registers Vala's words. Send the energy wave through the entire Gate network. That's the last thing Anubis is waiting for. And Ba'al knows how to do it. He shut down the whole network once. If he shut it down, he can turn it on.

If the Jaffa lose the battle for Dakara, Ba'al will give up that information to Anubis to prove his loyalty. He'll have to, after Dar Eshkalon.

"How do you know all this?" Dani asks, and Vala gives her a disgusted look. 

"Do you think I was spying on Anubis for my _health?_ "

"You were Ba'al's agent," Dani says. "And now you're double crossing him."

"Qetesh would be so proud," Vala comments. "Listen, darling, time is short. I was never working for Ba'al in the first place. He thought I was still host to Qetesh—the Tok'ra don't brag about their victories, unlike some people I could name. It was easy to convince him I was seeking alliance as a means to regaining power. But I was there on behalf of—oh, some people whose names aren't important right now. And this is our chance."

Dani takes a deep breath. "Okay," she says. "But after you use it, we blow it up."

"Fine," Vala says. She stoops down to pluck Dani's flashlight from the floor, and shines it on the rock face. "Now. How well do you read Ancient?"

#

The Ancients have always been far too fond of traps and riddles and puzzles, littering the galaxy with them in an apparent effort to drive their remote descendents mad. The Dakara Device is no exception. They have to get through the wall to get to it, and to do that they have to solve the puzzle: it requires rotating all five circles so that the glyphs (which have one meaning upright and another reversed) spell out the winning combination. Dani suggests just blowing it open, but Vala isn't sure what's on the other side, or what the attempt to force it will do. For the chance to kill Anubis really and sincerely dead, Dani will go along with her, but the Marines (if _Odyssey_ is up there, and survives) will be landing soon, and she isn't handing over ultimate power to people like Richard Woolsey and Shen Xiaoyi.

(Cam said something to her once. _"Earth's too big a thing to love, sometimes."_ But she tries.)

The battle's moving closer. Flashes of light hit the ground outside as one side or the other rakes the ground with energy beams, and some smaller craft crash into the ruins—and (once) into the stone colossus with enough force to make both of them stagger. But finally the wall slides inward and rises into the ceiling...and they're staring at a solid rock wall. When the whole passageway shakes, Dani thinks it's just something else hitting the ground. But the rock walls slide back and...

"We're in," Vala says.

It's an enormous round chamber. It's stood here untouched for at least the last fifty million years, but it still has light and power. The light is pale and greenish, but it's light. Vala moves toward the console in the middle. It looks like the one that was supposed to be a time machine. (And spectacularly wasn't.) "Are you sure this thing—" Dani begins. Suddenly a screen in the back wall of the chamber comes to life. It's scrolling Ancient symbols too fast for Dani to read. "Is it supposed to be doing that?"

"I have no idea," Vala answers. "But someone else does."

Dani is moving automatically toward the screen, her backpack dangling from one hand, when there's the chirping sound of something being activated. She turns around just in time to see the hologram shimmer into view. It isn't Ancient; there's a familiar silver ball on top of the console now. A _vo'cuum_. God knows where Vala was keeping it.

The figure in the hologram looks human enough.

He's wearing the uniform of the Lucian Alliance.

"What is your status?"

"We've reached the device, Netan."

"'We'?" Netan's voice is harsh with suspicion. (Netan is the leader of the entire Lucian Alliance; Dani doesn't know whether to be impressed or worried.) "If you're planning to betray—"

" _How_ I did the job was left entirely up to me, Netan, and you know it. I brought in a contractor to get the door open. Come over here, darling, and let the nice man see you."

Dani walks reluctantly over to stand beside Vala. Netan's eyes widen, then narrow. "Do you know who that is?" he demands.

"Do I look stupid?" Vala demands in the same tone. "I've worked with her before."

(In a manner of speaking.)

"This is on your head," Netan says, but the conversation is apparently finished, because he steps out of range of the _vo'cuum_ and another figure takes his place. A Serrakin. One of the few races they've encountered that aren't human transplants, and more technologically-advanced than Earth. (Hebridan holds spaceship races for fun.) The plates of cuticle on his face are pale with age.

"Vala Mal Doran!" he says. "How I wish I could stand where you are standing now!"

"Perhaps you will someday, Professor Norbek," Vala says. "But right now I need to know how to activate this device."

"Why, dear child, it's already activated," the Serrakin says. "What you must do is program and fire it."

Dani can hear Vala roll her eyes from here. 

"Yes, of course, thank you. Now how do I do that?"

"Just push the buttons," Norbek says, breaking into wheezing laughter at his own wit.

"These," Dani says quickly, gesturing at the squares that cover the entire top of the console. "I've seen something like this before."

"Have you?" She'd forgotten for a moment this is a two-way transmission. The old Serrakin looks delighted, his red eyes opening wide. "Where? What was it?"

"A time machine," Dani says. "But it didn't work."

"Just tell me what buttons to push!" Vala demands.

"Of course, of course. The young. Always so impatient."

"He does know we're all about to die, doesn't he?" Dani whispers. 

"We are on a bit of a deadline here, Norbek," Vala says dangerously.

"Oh very well." This comment seems to be addressed to someone on Norbek's side, rather than to them. "Start with the one at the top right. Push it down. Slowly."

When Vala does, the scrolling on the screen stops. Now there's only three rows of letters. If she gets out of this alive, Dani vows to pay another visit to Hebridan, because apparently Norbek is fluent enough in Ancient to be able to interpret what the screen is saying. Each time Vala pushes on another square, the letters change (they're gibberish to Dani, but that's because they aren't words: the Ancients used letters for numbers and that's something she hasn't cracked yet).

There's nothing she can do to help, and while she desperately wants to stand and watch, Dani has promises to keep. She crouches down behind the console and opens her pack. C4 is nothing but conventionally-flammable clay without a fuse. It's the same principle as a nuclear weapon, really: you set off a small explosion to trigger a bigger one. She makes a little pyramid of the blocks, and then carefully inserts a fuse into each one. The radio signal on her detonator should reach it from the colonnade steps; setting it off any closer is probably a bad idea (all she knows is that this is _a lot_ of C4; she has no demolitions training so she just brought as much as she could).

She looks down at the detonator in her hand and then stares down at the pile of explosive. Ancient technology. The secret of life itself. And she's going to blow it up. Vala said the Dakara Device only had a local range unless you linked all the Gates together and opened them all at once, and Ba'al is unlikely to do that once Anubis is dead.

But what if you only opened a Gate between two points? Anyone can do that. Does she want to leave something intact that can destroy an entire planet?

No.

"Got it!" Vala crows.

Dani drops the detonator into her pocket and stands up just in time to see Vala slam down one last button with two-handed glee.

Nothing.

Then...something. A penetrating hum that makes her bones ache, coming from everywhere at once. A rumbling as if the mountain itself is about to launch itself into space.

"Norbek!" Vala shouts, but the shaking has knocked the _vo'cuum_ off the console, and Norbek isn't here.

The shaking gets stronger.

"Run," Dani says.

#

Good news: Bra'tac won the day with his idea of taking Dakara and nobody on Dar Eshkalon died. Bad news: Ba'al didn't dawdle very long before doubling back. Good news: when _Odyssey_ and the Jaffa Fleet get to Dakara, they're met by the Lucian Alliance. Better news: the Alliance is on the Jaffa side.

Bad news: Anubis shows up too, and his fleet may be the smallest of the four but it's got the biggest ships.

So far _Odyssey's_ shields are holding. 

So far.

The tac channel is a babble of internal status reports and the chatter from their pilots: the Jaffa apparently don't believe in making small talk during the Apocalypse. _Odyssey_ can't get within beaming range of the surface, which means Plan A is a dead issue right now. So is Plan B, for that matter, since if they can't get people to the surface they can't get the Gatebuster there either. Plan C involves throwing down on the side of the angels; the trouble is, there are four fleets out there, and three and a half of them all have identical ships. _Odyssey's_ only safe target is Anubis's Mark 2s, and her rail guns aren't much use there. Colonel Emerson's deployed their 302s, but keeps them flying close cover.

Cam's never felt so useless. Even if he wanted to get his hands dirty, there isn't a 302 to spare. All he can do is stand here and watch, grabbing anything he can find to hang onto each time their inertial compensators lag. Even Sam's got a job to do, tweaking their sensors to distinguish among "friendlies", "hostiles", and "probably not hostiles right now but you never know". That last group is the Lucians, and all Cam knows is that nobody here invited them to the party. Unless that's where Dani went after 238.

Wherever she is, he hopes she's safe. 

"Something's happening on the surface!" Sam shouts over the noise. "I'm getting a spike in energy readings!"

"What is it?" Colonel Emerson demands.

"Not _Goa'uld,_ whatever it is, sir. I've never seen readings like these before."

"Colonel, you have _got_ to get us within transport range of the surface!" Cam says. The jarheads are ready to go, and so is the Gatebuster. 

"The energy's increasing," Sam says. "It's off the scale!"

Emerson looks at him. "Colonel Mitchell?" he says.

"We all know what's down there," Cam says. "Looks like somebody plans to use it."

"Major," Colonel Emerson says. "Recall the 302s. Helm, get us into beaming range any way you can."

They're close enough for long-range sensors to show them the top of a mountain opening up like the petals of a flower. Something's rising up out of it, glowing so brightly that when Cam looks away from the viewscreen to the planet itself, he can see a hot blue-white light glowing down on the surface.

"Colonels, is that the Dakara Device?"

"I don't know!" Sam says desperately.

"Major Marks, lock all missiles and rail guns onto that energy source and prepare to fire."

"Sir!" Cam says desperately. "The Jaffa—" Because he knows the politics of this as well as Dani does, and they might be able to hide a _naquadriaah_ warhead, but _Odyssey_ is in plain sight.

"We'll discuss it with the Jaffa once I'm sure we're all here to do so!" Colonel Emerson snaps.

"Weapons systems locked on and ready," Major Marks says.

"The device on the surface—" Sam says.

Too late.

Cam watches as the blue white dot expands and dims, turning the whole surface of Dakara a foggy blue-white before it starts expanding faster than _Odyssey_ can run.

"Brace for impact!" Emerson shouts. The klaxons sound, and Cam tries to think of a suitable last thought. The energy wave expands over them, past them, over all the ships in Dakara space.

And nothing happens.

"Sir, the _Goa'uld_ fleets are turning to run!"

"I don't think they're all running, Colonel," Sam says a beat later. "The ships we've identified as Anubis's seem to be...drifting." 

She flips a switch and the viewscreen switches to near space. Cam watches in amazed disbelief as two Mark 2 _ha'taks_ slowly collide.

#

They run. It feels as if the whole temple mountain is going to come down on them, and if it does, the Dakara Device will be buried forever.

Of course, so will she and Vala.

Pillars break free from the walls and topple; wall blocks force themselves loose from their courses to jut into the corridor. The torches fall from their brackets; Vala grabs one as they run, because Dani has no idea where her flashlight is just now. They trip and fall and stagger and _keep going_ , and then whatever's happening _happens_. There's one last abrupt concussion, and the pillars screening the exit (closer than she thought they were) are silhouetted against a blue-white light that goes on and on.

Then it stops.

The air is filled with dust. Something's burning outside the temple now; there's enough light to show the entrance, if faintly. There's a distant sound of engines. Something's landing. She hears the unmistakable sound of a ring platform: ground troops are landing. (Whether to take Dakara or to take it back is yet to be determined.)

"Pity about the armor," Vala says. "I'm adding that to my bill."

"Did we win?" Dani asks blankly. 

"Only one way to find out, darling. Come with me." Vala holds out her hand. "There's a whole universe out there the _Tau'ri_ will never see."

"No," Dani says, taking a step back. "Thank you. But there's someone waiting for me." (If he's still alive and if she survives, but that's the risk they've always been willing to take. And always will be.)

"I hope he's worth it," Vala says, raising her eyebrows.

"He is," Dani says.

Vala turns to go.

"Oh!" Dani says. "I almost forgot! Tell—" _Tell Netan. Tell someone who will use it._ "The last shipment of tretonin to Chulak—it's got the formula in it. To make it."

Vala takes a few quick steps back to where Dani stands. "You are truly wasted on that pathetic backwater," she says. She hands Dani the torch she's still holding, and as she does, she kisses her cheek. "Goodbye."

Vala turns away again, and this time she runs.

#

It's almost a day later by the time _Odyssey's_ ready to head for home. The Dakara Device went off and they're all still here: they still don't know much more than that. All Cam knows is that the Marines they carted all the way out here finally got to be useful; even with Master Bra'tac's "all hands" broadcast to all four fleets, there was a bit of good old fashioned hand-to-hand fighting and a lot of confusion (in which the Lucian Alliance apparently took off with two of Anubis's Mark 2s, which Cam's sure will probably come back to haunt somebody eventually) before the Marines and the Jaffa took both enemy fleets.

Teal'c says all the Kull Warriors in the _Goa'uld_ fleets dropped dead when the Dakara Device fired. According to reports, Anubis vanished in a flash of light at the same time, but whether he's dead this time or not, he's out there in his underwear: they've got his fleet and his (surviving) troops. For just a moment it looked like they were going to sweep the board: Cam was in the boarding party for Ba'al's flagship, and for one brief shining moment the good guys _actually had their hands on him._ But like any good rat, Ba'al had a ratline: he beamed off the _pel'tac_ and nobody's seen him since.

It doesn't matter as much as it could. He's going to find it hard to make a comeback. The Jaffa have Dakara, and Master Bra'tac was right: having it means they've won. Jaffa have been streaming into the system from all over the galaxy. If there are any _Goa'uld_ still out there, they're going to have to do their own housework from now on.

Sam wants to go down to the surface and poke around. She's having a polite argument with Emerson (possible vast scientific knowledge versus the Colonel doesn't really want to come out and say he thinks his orders might call for him to drop a planet-cracker on a planet full of friendlies and he's not entirely okay with that) when Teal'c provides the tie-breaker by phoning them up and asking if Colonel Emerson might consider sending down his friends.

"Of course," the Colonel says, before Sam can get in another word. (It's a good out; whatever the IOA might say to him when he gets home, nobody'd want to hear he dropped a Gatebuster on three-fourths of SG-1.) "They're on their way."

#

"Cam," Sam says, when they're alone in the elevator. "We'll find her. We'll never stop looking. She might have gone to Dar Eshkalon. She might be on one of the ships right now. Teal'c—"

"Hush, now, Samantha Eileen," Cam says. "You know where she went, well as I do." _'They'll have to send somebody else to drop flowers on both of us,'_ he hears in memory. "She wasn't going to sit this one out, no matter what she said to anyone. She went to the gates of Hell."

#

The Asgard transporter drops them right in front of the Dakara Stargate. It's morning here, cold enough to cut the smell of burning in the air, and the place looks like a war zone. Work parties are clearing the area, but it's going to be a while before Dakara's a garden spot again. If it ever was.

Teal'c's waiting for them.

"That's where it was fired from," Sam says, pointing at a spire of rock about a mile away. She takes a step forward. Cam puts a hand on her arm.

"Sam," he says. 

And she looks down, and sees what Cam sees. He holds out his arms.

"Gonna kill you," he whispers in Dani's ear, swinging her around. He doesn't think she hears him, though. She's laughing too hard.

They all are.

Even Teal'c's grinning.

#

EPILOGUE: FEBRUARY 2007—JUNE 2007

"Clearly Vala Mal Doran was able to track the _vo'cuum's_ energy signature," Sammy says. (It's the only plausible explanation—aside from the actual truth—and nobody here at the table can say it's impossible.)

General Landry, General Hammond, Colonel Davis, Agent Johnson, and the heavy hitters of the IOA (Colonel Chekov, Shen Xiaoyi, and Richard Woolsey, plus a new guy, Woolsey's aide, and Dani really doesn't think she's going to like James Marrick any better than she likes Richard Woolsey), are all here to receive SG-1's report on the Battle for Dakara. The person who could tell them the most isn't here (Teal'c stayed behind on Dakara. He's finally done what Jack asked him to do all those years ago. He's freed the Jaffa. It's time to wage the peace), but the three of them are, and they owe Stargate Command—and Earth—its answers.

(Some of them, anyway.)

"She told Netan she'd brought me in as a consultant," Dani says (the best lies are made of truth).

"She was working for the Lucian Alliance, Dr. Jackson?" Kerry Johnson asks. "Is that how she knew about the Dakara Device?"

It's Day Three of the debrief. Day One was just with General Landry and General Hammond, Day Two was with the full table, and Day Three (in hallowed IOA tradition), involves repeating everything they told them on Day Two. (And if this goes on much longer, they can just turn all of this repetition into a formal litany, with call and response and maybe a choir.) 

"I didn't ask her," Dani answers. (She didn't have to: she told Vala about it herself, something she doesn't think she needs to mention.) "She needed my help to gain access to it: she'd discovered it could destroy Anubis."

"And did it?" General Landry asks.

"She activated it and fired it with the aid of a Lucian Alliance scientist," Dani answers. "That's all I know for sure." (It's all she knew yesterday, and it's all she's going to know tomorrow.)

"But she seemed pretty certain it would work," Cam says helpfully. 

"Apparently that was information she'd gotten while spying on Anubis," Dani says. "Ba'al thought she was working for him." (Ba'al thought she was—still—a _Goa'uld_ named Qetesh; Dani's looked, but there's no record of a Qetesh anywhere in the SGC mission reports; maybe the _Tok'ra_ can confirm Qetesh's—former—existence, maybe not.) She shrugs. "I have no idea who she was actually working for."

"So, um, where is she now?" That's Marrick. (Delighted to be here, delighted to meet the amazing SG-1, and maybe they could get together for drinks some time, may-I-call-you-Dani?)

"She left," Dani says. "The Free Jaffa were taking Dakara at the time. Maybe she's dead." (She doubts it; if Vala's anything, she's a survivor.)

"And the Dakara Device?" Woolsey asks waspishly. "The _Odyssey_ was sent to Dakara with specific orders to retrieve it."

Something Colonel Emerson certainly couldn't do—or even attempt—with several thousand Free Jaffa boots on the ground. And which he has probably already told them via subspace communicator, and which he will probably tell them again during his separate-but-equal debrief.

"It's gone," Dani says. "It blew up shortly after it was fired."

"Are you quite certain of that, Dr. Jackson?" General Hammond asks. (He's the only one here who might be able to spot—who almost certainly _can_ spot—the stitches of elision holding the patches of truth together.)

"Yes, General Hammond," she says steadily. "I'm quite certain. I was nearly caught in the explosion. It collapsed that entire section of the complex."

And that, too, is truth.

"So," General Landry says, with anvil jocosity. "Anubis is dead, Ba'al's on the run, the Jaffa are free—I guess we should just close this place down and all go home."

Paul and Agent Johnson exchange meaningful glances. _Disclosure,_ Dani thinks. _We've defeated the Goa'uld, and the next step is Disclosure._

"Oh, I don't think we're all out of a job yet, sir," Cam says. "At least, I hope not. Plenty still to see and do out there."

And that's true too.

#

It's Wednesday when they're finally done, which means their 72 ends Friday, so they don't actually have to be back until Monday (or as General Landry said: "Take as much time as you like, SG-1. I'd say you've earned it.") Once upon a time she would have been fretting over the state of her desk and her department; making plans to work through the weekend.

Not now.

Things have changed.

As they get off the shuttle bus in their parking lot (took her Jeep to work on Friday instead of two cars because he wasn't going to be there that night to drive home and thought she would be), Cam tells her it's a special day. He's smiling when he says it, but then he looks horrified, and she pulls him to a stop. He's apologizing and saying he hadn't thought, he'd never hurt her, when she realizes what he's talking about.

It's Valentine's Day.

It's the day Jack died.

"Cam," she says gently. "It's okay. It _is_ a special day. We won, you know." _All of us, Jack. We won._

"We did that," Cam says. "C'mon. Let's go home."

_("For this you can stay at my place!")_

And they do.

#

She likes to hold his hand when they sleep. Or...not his hand, really, but his wrist, her fingers coiled around it, thumb gently pressed into the back of his hand, fingers resting on the inside of his wrist. It took him a while to notice that when they sleep together (the sleeping part) she always picks a position where she can.

From there it was only a short step to figuring out 'why.'

She's counting his pulsebeats. Counting herself down into sleep, or (just as likely, maybe—since it's her—more likely) making sure he's (a) him and (b) still alive. It's weird, in a sweet way. Or maybe sweet, in a weird way. Which pretty much sums up the good parts of him, her, them, and his life.

It's not that he minds. Not at all. It just makes him think. People always used to think he didn't. Big ol' dumb Cam Mitchell, and for years 'jock' was part of his name. Football jock. Fighter jock. But she has _never,_ not for one minute, not from the beginning, thought he was dumb, and that's pretty damned special, since, well, she's a genius.

So's Sam, but in a whole different way. Sam plays at being 'just folks' a whole lot better than Little Miss does. But Cam's had a chance to meet a whole boatload of geniuses (because Stargate Command collects them like he and Ash collected baseball cards way back when), and geniuses aren't just people who are extra smart (because Cam's met a lot of those; contrary to popular belief, the military collects 'em too), but people whose smarts make them into a _whole different kind_ of smart. The kind where they don't really think much like regular folks at all, any part of the time.

Like his girl. Who (he's pretty sure) finds it about as hard to communicate with regular Earth humans as she does with their little alien buddies. Maybe harder, because shoot: talking to humans isn't supposed to be hard, is it? Except when you don't think like most of 'em, and never have. 

Which makes what they've got even more special. Because (Momma says, and Cam believes it as much and more as anything in the Good Book) anything worth having is worth working for, and Dani's worked as hard as he has to get here, even though (if you were looking at it from the outside) most of the time it looked like she was doing just the opposite.

Cam knows she wasn't. She was just making _sure._ Because she never does anything by halves. Loving, hating, working...if she was going to make up her mind to love him, she needed to be sure about a lot of things. Mostly, that he'd still be here. And he always knew he would, but it's not something you can say. It's something the other person has to learn, or it doesn't count.

And now she counts out his heartbeats to put her to sleep, because they're wrapped up in each other every way there is, and will be for the rest of their lives, however long that is.

#

Sammy would say Time isn't linear, something Dani knows without needing a degree in astrophysics. Sometimes, for example, it runs backward. All through that spring and summer it seems as if Stargate Command is unspooling back to its beginnings, the days when there were three missions a week and she could actually catch up on her paperwork. (Caitlin Wong is settling in nicely; it's a relief to have a Sea Peoples' expert she can actually have a civil conversation with.) Paul is still here, and isn't letting her forget her promise, but hey: next November's a long way away. Anything might happen.

She's been spending all her free days, and, well, just about every night at Cam's place. The house (in her mind, it's still and forever _The House_ ) doesn't seem like a place she wants to be these days. She'd rather be with Cam, but in that case, why not be with Cam at her ( _Jack's_ ) place? It has four times the room Cam's apartment does. 

He's never suggested he move in there. She's never offered.

And one Saturday afternoon in June, four months after the more-or-less conclusive once-and-for-all defeat of the _Goa'uld_ Empire, the destruction of Anubis, and the liberation of the Jaffa, she spends forty minutes hunting through stacks of books (they fill every corner of Cam's apartment by now, and there's hardly any room to move around the living room) for a reference she was _sure_ she'd brought over last weekend, only to remember (finally) that no, it's still in her study over at _The House._

And she slams down one book on top of a pile of books, and they all go skidding, and she wails: "We can't go on living like this!"

Cam looks up. He's sprawled out on the couch not-really watching something on television. The couch is clear, thank god, although there are books piled up at each end. (Books under the coffee table. Books stacked up all around the back of the couch.)

"There's no room," she says, more quietly. And the bathroom is miniscule, and getting ready in the morning is a logistical nightmare, and with her espresso machine here there's no counter space in the kitchen any more. 

He smiles, and holds out his hand, and she sighs, and gets to her feet, and settles in on-top-of-next-to him. He puts an arm around her to hold her in place.

"We need a bigger place," she says (in case he hasn't figured that out).

"H'm," he says.

"We could look for one," she says.

"H'm," he says again, on a different note. "You asking me to move in with you?"

"No," she says. "I mean, yes."

He chuckles softly. "Clear as mud, baby."

"We'd both be moving."

It's the answer to the riddle, she realizes. The last thing she has to let go of. The long watch is over. 

"Ah," he says. "Gonna need a pretty big place to hold all those books of yours."

"Then I guess you'd better get off your ass and start looking," she says, "because it's going to need a damned big kitchen, too."

"Thought we'd come around to food sooner'r latter," he says lazily.

"Who was bitching last year about not having enough room to cook? If you get your ass in gear we could be in a new place by November."

"This is June," he says, attempting to sound put-upon. She isn't falling for it.

"And November is five months from now, and it's not as if we're going to have a lot of free time to _look_ at places, and then there's closing, and getting moved..."

"And... we'll have help."

She raises up to look at him, because she's sure he's delusional. Who can they get to help? Everyone they know is either an alien or has the same (still-)ridiculous work schedule they do.

"When we find a place we like, I will call Momma, and she will figure out which of the cousins can spare the time to come and help out," Cam announces.

"Your mother's in North Carolina."

"That she is. And there's an airport right here in Colorado Springs. Baby, you don't need to worry about this. It'll all get done."

"Still have to find a place."

"Then I suggest you let me up off'n this couch."

The war is over. The long watch is ended.

_"I stand relieved."_

###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bunch of spear-carriers die off-stage, but aside from that...nothing.

**Author's Note:**

>  **WARNINGS:** Major character death, minor character death, OC character death, attempted rape, reference to rape, torture, more torture, destruction of several planets (canonical and non-canonical); maligning the _soi-disant_ good name of several canonical characters and glorifying others to a possibly-embarrassing extent; harsh language, foul language, abusive language, politically-incorrect language; cursing; not nearly enough sex, (but what there is, is usually explicit); heterosexuality; pregnant women, explicit babies not belonging to canonical characters; mentions of shopping; gratuitous descriptions of food; more gratuitous descriptions of food; holidayfic; birthdayfic; hagiographicization of fanon; houseporn, angst, schmoop, digressions, and being too fucking long. 
> 
> (Maybe later I'll tell you about the granite countertops. With one thing and another, they didn't make it in to the finished version.)


End file.
